Security

I wanted to like this book more. I didn't hate it. I know, I say this quite a bit. In the end, I was disappointed.

It is a giant gimmick. I was expecting something of a gimmick, to be sure. But the gimmick, as far as I'm concerned, interferes with the prose. This writer writes some lovely sentences. But sometimes sentences add to the preciousness and pretentiousness of the gimmick. Which is that our narrator is a the security chief for the Manderley Hotel, the most luxurious and ridiculous hotel in the world–and he must watch everything occur on, like, 64 monitors as the shit hits the fan, and he can't do anything because he's close to dead, maybe–or can he do something? It's related to found footage, but this gimmick is usually iffy in literature; it's understandably hard to pull off.

That being said, the gimmick and her prose our more engaging than most of our characters, none of whom are very original or interesting. The manager is gay and awful (that's offensive). The FRENCH CHEF is basically an angry version of Chef Louis from ‘The Little Mermaid' (lovely stereotype). Two married caterers are tritely dysfunctional, with the wife being manic-depressive (which is fine, but she's a meh character, even though I prefer her to some of the others); and the husband is a cheating, immature bro. Our romantic leads are traumatized and scarred and love each other so romantically that the first time they have sex, it's picture perfect and magical and lasts forever, whilst the security chief–also in love with our trite heroine–looks on mournfully. Don't believe a review that talks about a layered love story. Sure, some amusing stuff happens with the internal dialogue of the security chief. But everything gets tired. The characters aren't strong enough, nor is the gimmick good enough, to maintain themselves for the duration of the novel.

So, yes, I wasn't bored, and I even enjoyed some of the prose. But I wouldn't give this more than 2.5 stars, and I don't feel like rounding up to three.