Thanks netgalley for this ARC.

Awesome, lovely, thrilling, and delicious

I really wanted to love this book. At moments I felt so engrossed that I couldn't put it down, and I even cried in public reading parts of it. But, it didn't pan out overall. I found chunks of the book that I had to force myself through because I just couldn't keep interest. I was invested in Pierrot and Rose so I couldn't give up, but there were times I really didn't want to go on. It definitely felt over-long and I found there were so many small picaresque episodes that I just didn't care about the overall plot.

I gave this book 4* because even though I really struggled through it, when it was good, it was REALLY good. It was worth the low points; though I wish I hadn't had to get through them.

Difficult to read and difficult to review.
The opening scene graphically describes child abuse and it just gets worse from there. These things do take place I know, but I was expecting a book akin to the Night Circus about the world of theatre and performances and hope against hope whereas the book was very dark and grim.
Maybe the start cast a shadow I couldn't escape from, but this one isn't for me. More circus and theatre next time please!

An unlikely story about two abandoned babies left in the unstable, deeply brutal hands of the orphanage run by the Order of the Sisters of Mercy. The unrelated boy and girl both experience poverty, hunger, humiliation, regular beatings, and abuse. But despite this or possibly because of this, their special ability to bring magic and happiness to their peers with their wild imagination and ability to perform tricks leads them to making a marriage vow at the young age of 13.

“Their little brains were not allowed to amuse themselves or to dally happily in the magical Elysium of the mind that was childhood”.

This is an enchanting read with a kaleidoscope of characters and moments enhanced by O’ Neills favourable style of using copious similes and analogies in her descriptive prose.

“Rose passed a tree in the park that was growing tot the side so much that it was almost parallel to the ground. It was like a consumptive young lady reclining on a chair. The leaves were like poems that had fallen to the ground”.

On this journey we arrive in the Depression era and are then whisked through a dark opium fuelled underworld of prostitution and show-business.

“Every day the average person will witness six miracles. But it isn’t that we don’t believe in miracles – we just don’t believe that miracles are miracles. There are so many miracles all around us”.

It is truly compelling and enthralling; it was hard to put this book down such were the insightful observations and medley of language.

The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a difficult book to review. There are things that I really liked about it, some of the characters, the artistry, the setting in Montreal. However it is also a really raw book that isn't afraid of anything, from drugs, to sex, to murder, to abortion and rape. Truly, I never expected it when I picked up this book, so perhaps that's why I was surprised by it. But I believe it deserves a trigger warning, after all the book starts with a rape and goes on to have many more rapes. The rape and the rough sex is handled in such a nonchalant manner that it almost feels daunting. Though at times it felt as though the plot was being stretched far too long, it all made sense with the ending. It felt like a perfect circle. And while the plot was interesting, I (and it's personal preference at this point) wish it had been less pervaded by sexual and social deviance.

Pulsates with life and character - by turns poignant, shocking, romantic and sexy, it's not like anything else I've read and that's always exciting.

To be published in numerous magazines in May: Pierrot and Rose grow up together in a Montreal orphanage. They bond over a shared love of entertaining people, but go their separate ways as teenagers. Years later they’re reunited, and set out to realise their childhood dream of running their own stage show. Their path isn’t an easy one, however. They both have demons to face, and Rose’s wants her dead. A highly entertaining read, with beautiful, lyrical prose and characters you’ll be rooting for from the beginning.

The juxtaposition of the whimsy and the brutal subject matter didn't entirely work for me, but I think there are readers who will love this well written novel.

Thanks Quercus Books and netgalley for this ARC.

Loved this otherworldly novel. If you want sickly sweet then read YA BUT if you want a good adult magical novel this is it.

This is a story set in Montreal around the time of the depression, and has been described as being comparable to The Night Circus, so I started with high hopes.
What I found was the tale of two orphans, Rose and Pierrot, who are brought up in a particularly brutal orphanage, and go on to live and work among the brothels and gangsters of that town.
They each have a talent, Pierrot plays the piano and brings joy to those who hear his playing, Rose connects with people through her outgoing, quirky personality and appears to make every man she meets fall in love with her.
Unfortunately, I found nothing magical about the sordid background of casual sex, violence and drug taking, and didn’t like either of the main characters.
I persevered to the bitter end, hoping for the promised magic, but it never appeared, and I was very disappointed.

Thanks to Netgalley and Quercus Books for the opportunity to read this book.

I honestly think that this book is one of the most beautifully written tales that I've ever read. It invokes a whole string of emotions from heartwarming to heartbreaking, as the circumstances that the two main characters find themselves in are often dire. The book doesn't shy away from the realism of two young adults leaving an orphanage during Depression era Montreal and covers a whole range of hard hitting elements, from prostitution, heroin addiction, poverty, child abuse, miscarriages, violence and murder. Despite being really tragic in places, the quality of the writing and the strength of the main characters kept the story from getting swallowed up into the darkness that was portrayed. Instead, Rose and Pierrot use these situations to motivate themselves to keep aiming for bigger and better things.

Bizarrely, the word that springs to mind when trying to describe the story is "magical" - but there's no magic actually involved. There are bizzare circumstances, huge coincidences and plenty of circus tricks but the novel is firmly based in reality. It's really hard to categorise the book - I guess it's a romance - but it covers such a wide range of topics that it manages to completely stand alone. It's like a combination of Requiem for a Dream and the Night Circus. I don't even know how it works, but it just does.

I really loved the two main characters. In particular, I liked what a strong character Rose was and I loved her relationship with Pierrot - they really complemented each other well and showed how a strong woman can be married to a man without him being weak. Their marriage was imperfect and they are both portrayed as flawed characters but they made it work entirely through their love for each other and the courage of their convictions.

I really enjoyed how Rose and Pierrot made their dreams into reality despite being so poor and having such a difficult start in life. I think that the strong presence of clowns in the novel were a metaphor for using their knowledge of tragedy to create something beautiful and positive. I also loved how the names of the hotels that the couple stayed in were all based around the theme of love and seemed to be metaphors for their guests. I suspect that there are lots of layers and hidden meanings to this book that have completely passed me by but the story was so exciting that I didn't fully digest what had happened before moving on to the next chapter!

The novel also had a fabulous ending - it's one of those books where everything is tied up neatly and you're left feeling really satisfied as a reader. Don't get me wrong, there's still heaps of tragedy but this just makes the ending all the more realistic.

Overall, I found this book incredibly engaging as despite being fairly long I finished it in a few days. I loved it's pace - it spans 27 years and always keep you wanting to know what happens next. I thought that it was beautifully written, magical but woefully tragic and because of this completely stands alone as its own uncategorisable self. Highly recommended.

A strange book that I tried to persevere with but sadly found not to my taste at all. It's descriptions of the abuse of two children are disturbing and the effect this has on their lives is immeasurable but I found the graphic sexual nature of some scenes distasteful. DNF

I'm not entirely sure where to start reviewing The Lonely Hearts Hotel; a novel which opens with an extreme act of cruelty, explores poverty, neglect and drug abuse and yet does so in prose which is both lyrical and beautiful. Telling the story of Montreal orphans Rose and Pierrot in the 1920s we are taken on a dazzling (and sometimes harrowing) journey from their difficult start in life, to their even more difficult adulthood through extreme poverty during The Great Depression. Reading that back it sounds like this is a depressing novel filled full of gloom, and, although it has its very dark moments there is so much joy and love contained within it that it bursts from every page.

Rose and Pierrot first meet in an orphanage run by nuns where they form an instant connection. They are both entertainers, Pierrot is a wonderful pianist whilst Rose dances and performs to his music; something which the nuns take advantage of, sending them out to the wealthy houses of Montreal to earn money from their abilities. They are in love and have a plan to create a circus together when they both leave the orphanage, until tragedy strikes and they are separated - Pierrot is adopted by a wealthy man whilst Rose becomes a governess in a household. Their lives veer in very different directions and O'Neill doesn't shy away from exploring the dark side of life, showing the lengths that somebody will go to to make a living. Pierrot falls into disrepute; penniless, madly in love with Rose and unable to find her he turns to heroin becoming very quickly addicted. Pierrot's struggle is wonderfully written with descriptive and vivid passages that convey the horror of addiction.

The star of this book though is the wonderful Rose, who is as whimsical as she is ballsy. She retreats to a world of make-believe, turning to her imaginary friend, a bear, to get her through the difficult times in the real world. The Lonely Hearts Hotel reads like a fairy tale at times and Rose is an anti-hero to the feeble princess waiting for a prince to make everything better. She is strong, defiant and intelligent; something which the men in the novel find very difficult in a woman. The Lonely Hearts Hotel is very much a novel about women; their oppression;

"That's because we're girls. We're supposed to only have emotions. We aren't even allowed to have thoughts"

"It was only when a girl was in love with a man that he could ruin her self-esteem"

And their strength;

"All fear is dependent on context"

Rose takes her circumstances and uses them to her advantage, learning all she can from the men she encounters as a gangster's moll to become a business woman in a time where women were maids, nurses, wives, mothers or prostitutes. She is kind-hearted and loving and doesn't lose her hope that one day she will be reunited with her love, Pierrot.

This book deals with very difficult themes; child abuse, drug addiction and rape all feature and I have read some criticism of this on some of the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and whilst I can fully understand why readers may have found this unpalatable, I don't think that this story could have been told without it. Rose and Pierrot live through a very difficult period in history and The Lonely Hearts Hotel tackles the issues and adversities faced by people like them head on.

I absolutely adored this novel, it was quite unlike anything else I've ever read before and days after finishing it I am still thinking about it and missing wonderful Rose and Pierrot. This novel has made me wish I was studying an English Lit degree again as there is so much more that I could write about, it's chock full of themes and metaphors and deserves a re-read. Many thanks to the publishers Riverrun and NetGalley for an advanced copy in return for an honest review, it was my pleasure to read this gorgeous book.

Thanks netgalley for this ARC.

Loved this otherworldly novel. If you want sickly sweet then read YA BUT if you want a good adult magical novel this is it.

Beneath the rather gorgeous art deco cover lies a story which is a bit Bugsy Malone crossed with Grimm fairy tales. Full of sexual abuse, violence and lost innocence, Pierrot and Rose are a wistful couple who love each other as children and drift through the world creating enchanting performances even while they deal with heroin addiction, prostitution and gangster violence.

There's something very unique in what O'Neill has done but there's a bit too much whimsy amidst the lost souls for me to completely buy into her vision.

Anyone sensitive might want to be aware that there is non-consensual sex and rape throughout the story alongside other forms of cruelty ('Poppy had been kicked out of the brothel for that day with Rose. She had been robbed and raped a few days later while turning a trick on the street corner').

The Snowflake Icicle Extravaganza remains a figure of hope and enchantment amidst a dark world but even that is undermined: 'you couldn't really achieve happiness as an adult. It was something that belonged to children' - though, apparently, not if you're an orphan like Rose and Pierrot. Even love, in this book, doesn't hold a cruel and brutal world at bay.

A beautiful book. By turns brutal and tender. Slightly mystical, but this is very much a love story. Perfect for lovers of The Night Circus. I am still thinking about these characters more than a week after I finished the book and couldn't settle to read anything else until yesterday. Lovely!!

Orphans, clowns, gangsters, whores, nuns and showgirls people this novel of early 20th century Montreal. Pierrot and Rose grow up at the same orphanage, unloved by anybody but the other. They are torn apart and each spends years pining for and then searching for their lost love. Spurred on by their experiences performing for the rich to raise money for the orphanage, their goal was always to create a magical touring company filled with clowns and showgirls.
This is a story of great sadness, suffering and loss but also of great love, joy and comic style. The tales of the clowns and the experiences that they create for their audience are wonderful. The mirroring of Rose and Pierrot’s search for each other is poignant but comic at the same time. There is a strange philosophical element to the book. It is not at all what I had expected but no worse for that. It is a vivid and exhilarating journey. It is a book of opposites – the haves and the have nots, light and dark, it makes you laugh and cry, just like the clowns it portrays.

First off, this book has an absolutely beautiful cover HOWEVER the content is absolutely not what the cover suggests. I can see why the marketing of this book (the cover, comparing it to Night Circus) has led to some unhappy readers. This is such a shame as although it was not the book I was led to expect it is really great.

This is a hard hitting novel: the story of two abused orphans living in Montreal during the great depression. Rose and Pierrot are star-crossed lovers, the universe throws everything it can at their relationship. They lose one another, struggle and strive to create better lives for themselves.

Like some other readers I found the details of the clowns and the music a bit repetitive and difficult to imagine, but the story and the characters swept me along. Rose is an amazing individual and someone I would like to know.

The Lonely Hearts Hotel has an unusual writing style, it's almost like a fairy tale style of explaining what is happening. Little things are described in great detail like the food that they're eating, or a girl that has so many holes in her stockings "they looked like oil paint on water".

It's a magical, almost childlike style but at first I felt disconnected from the characters and their emotions. It did take me a bit of effort to keep going but after the first few chapters I got used to it, and I ended up really enjoying it.

It's a very adult book though, it starts with Rose and Pierrot as children in an orphanage where they suffer physical and sexual abuse. It's set during the great depression and a lot of the book is about the things people have to do to survive poverty. There's a lot of sex in it and heroin addiction plays a large part in the book.

The fairy tale style story telling sometimes felt to me like it was at odds with the darkness in the book. It did stop it from being too depressing and brought a much needed lightness to the story, but at the same time it softened the impact of the abuse and maybe glossed over it a bit.

But the magical style brings the city of Montreal to life, I could almost feel the cold and the poverty, I could see the girls on the streets and picture them in their outfits they were described so well. The story is full of nightclubs, theatres, clowns, make believe and show girls and it sucked me in to it's world.

I cared about the characters, and the end of the book was hard for me to read because it's hopeful but so bittersweet. I got that sad feeling I get when I really love a book and I feel like I've lost friends when it ends. It's not one I would want to read if I was already feeling sad!