Book Review: "The Hotel" by Daisy Johnson

It is March 2025 and my health is a bit here and there to be honest. It's cold and I'm back in my hometown of Birmingham for some rest. However, that didn't stop me from borrowing some books from the library to take back with me. This book, entitled The Hotel by Daisy Johnson might be a short one, but that doesn't mean it is any lesser than others. With a beginning that will remind you of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, this short set of stories encompasses a hotel which is known for its horrid happenings. Beginning with a prologue, it gives us an overview before plunging us into the depths of fourteen terrifying stories surrounding that patch of cursed land. I will now go through some stories I thought were notable within this anthology...

One of the best stories is called The Witch in which a woman who is married and living on farmland admits to the reader that she can see future events. This scares the people around her and causes her to be ostracised from the community. Her husband also becomes more afraid of her, refusing to answer her when she talks. Once people starting dying in the town, heads turn to the witch that possibly caused it all according to them. Having told her own future in which she was destined to die without returning home, she awaits a terrifying micarriage of justice to kill her. This story is very short but it is absolutely captivating. It may not seem like a lot at first but you quickly become trapped in the story, enveloped in her possibilities - each possibility in which she might die, knowing that she will.

There is another story called Clean about a small group of cleaners who work at the hotel. Our protagonist explains her father is dying in a care home and she has to pay his way by working at the hotel. Her and a few others take it in turns to clean the dreaded room 63. They make fun of the legends by playing with ouija boards to pass the time, making the dreariness of the job more interesting. But that's when things really get interesting. One day, wanting to hand in her notice, she finds she can't. She's back in uniform. She's in the hotel. And something horrifying is about to go down. In this story, I found the short and terse way of telling it worked to the author's advantage. Leaving things out works just as well as giving us information, but here it is especially good to not give us everything all at once.

Another story I want to talk about is called The Monster which begins with an 'entity' of some kind, born within the hotel. However, as we move through the story, we start putting one and one together (more or less, if you've read the other stories until this one, there are some small references you might pick up). What really got to me is that there is a kind of fairy tale that is told at the end of this short story involving a Hansel and Gretel situation in which two children, ravaged by hunger, eat a terrifying looking house. But there's a weird twist that leaves the reader not asking questions, but instead they are afraid. This is a fantastic addition to the narrative and has that sort of weird folklore atmosphere that I always enjoy.

One more great story is called Night Watch in which a woman who works as a night guard at the hotel recounts her past with her husband who has since passed away. She tells us about the pregnancy and how he was standing by for a disaster as one of those apocalypse-preparation people. She also recounts how she knew that just by him not being near her at one point, he was dead. In the hotel, water begins to pour from key holes and from underneath the doors of various rooms. But, I think you'll want to read it to find out why. Brilliantly written, again it has some eerie references to previous stories about the hotel and the interweaving of the 'Bear Hunt' story was wild - I didn't quite expect that at all.

All in all, you have to - no you must read this book. In the meantime, I think I will be sleeping with the lights on for a few nights - unless too much darkness seeks to come in.