Cover Image: The Paragon Hotel

The Paragon Hotel

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When confronting the long, terrible history of racism in the US, it's easy to limit the scope to the southern states, and forget that other areas of the country were not necessarily uniformly safe, welcoming places. I had never heard about Oregon's particular issues, and Lyndsay Faye does a remarkable job recreating the environment and dangers of 1921 Portland. Faye actually does a great job with a lot of this book- she wrote the characters' voices in a way that I could hear their words, and the detail is exceptional. Not an easy read necessarily, but a really interesting take on a place and time that are a bit "off the beaten course" in historical fiction.

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The first thing I said when I saw this book was—-finally a cool interesting book set in Portland!

Living in Oregon, there isn’t an abundance of cool books set here. Sure we have a number of writers from Oregon that have made it into the ‘big time’, but for the most part Oregon isn’t exactly the hippest place to set your novel in.

In recent years though I have seen a lot of writers—both from Oregon or the PacNW and not—set their books here in my lovely state but it’s still not as popular as say New York or L.A.. I’ve read a few of Faye’s novels and have fallen in love with her writing so besides the fact that this book has Oregon ties, I wanted to read it because she wrote a new book!

The year is 1921, and “Nobody” Alice James is on a cross-country train, carrying a bullet wound and fleeing for her life following an illicit drug and liquor deal gone horribly wrong. Desperate to get as far away as possible from New York City and those who want her dead, she has her sights set on Oregon: a distant frontier that seems the end of the line.

She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of Harlem, who leads Alice to the Paragon Hotel upon arrival in Portland. Her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be the only all-black hotel in the city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises. But as she meets the churlish Dr. Pendleton, the stately Mavereen, and the unforgettable club chanteuse Blossom Fontaine, she begins to understand the reason for their dread. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland in fearful numbers–burning crosses, inciting violence, electing officials, and brutalizing blacks. And only Alice, along with her new “family” of Paragon residents, are willing to search for a missing mulatto child who has mysteriously vanished into the Oregon woods.

Why was “Nobody” Alice James forced to escape Harlem? Why do the Paragon’s denizens live in fear–and what other sins are they hiding? Where did the orphaned child who went missing from the hotel, Davy Lee, come from in the first place? And, perhaps most important, why does Blossom Fontaine seem to be at the very center of this tangled web? (summary from Goodreads).

This book was such a pleasure to read for one solid reason—-atmosphere. As always, Faye does such a great job at creating a mood in her novels and this one was no different. I loved how the novel split between New York and Portland. I thought it added a lot of interest and broke up the story nicely. So many novels are set in New York so it’s familiar, but not a lot of novels are set in Portland so this adds a lot to keep the reader interested in some place new.

I also thought the language of the novel worked well and kept things interesting and true to the period. I am normally not a huge fan of prohibition era books (just not my time period) but this book blended the glamour of the 1920s with the darker side of prohibition and the criminal world.

This novel is darker and a little more gritty than her last novel, Jane Steele—at least in my opinion. I like how Faye has this seamless ability to write a darker novel but yet still balance it perfectly so that it will appeal to many readers.

This book is rich in historical detail and brought to life a period that was a dark one for American history. In Portland, racism and the KKK aren’t things that a lot of people discuss or even really know about, and I love how Faye brings that side of Portland out in this book. It’s truly a pleasure to read a book so rich in historical detail as this one it. This is a novel that I think would be great for bookclubs. There is a lot to discuss and I think it’s a novel that will appeal to many, especially fans of historical fiction, but it has the darkness and grit of a noir book. I am super excited to share this novel with my friends and family, once again, a win for Faye!

Challenge/Book Summary:

Book: Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Kindle Edition, 432 pages
Expected publication: January 8th 2019 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons
ASIN B07CLBXMSG
Review copy provided by: Publisher/Author in exchange for an honest review, all opinions are my own
Recommendation: 5 out of 5
Genre: historical fiction
Memorable lines/quotes

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The latest book by one of my favorite authors (Jane Steele, Gods of Gotham) has a new one out, based in the PNW and it is gooooood. It begins in the 1920's, New York City, where a young girl named Alice has, shall we say, an 'interesting' childhood. Sprinkled throughout the book, we slowly understand how a neglected little girl becomes a gangster, a thief, and a runaway. In fact, Alice runs so far from New York that she winds up in Portland, Oregon where she is adopted into the Paragon Hotel. Patronized only by the few African-Americans who inhabit this incredibly racist city (Oregon's constitution made it illegal to move there if one was black + had the largest KKK group west of the Mississippi - yep, who knew??), Alice finds a plethora of intriguing characters: the drunk doctor and uncle to the beautiful yet mysterious singer, the Pullman car porter who is also a WWI decorated hero, the stern, religious front desk maven, the complicated siblings who work the elevator and clean rooms, the Southern cook, and the little boy who is raised by the entire population at the hotel. Throw in a bleeding-heart liberal woman who also happens to be married to the police chief, a burning cross, and some star-crossed lovers, and yes, you've got a humdinger of a story. Don't miss this fascinating book:)

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"That's the kicker about hotels --- they aren't homes, they're more like the paragon of waiting rooms. Unless you're part of the inner circle of this one, and you burrow underneath one another's surfaces, air the cupboards, lift the drapes, and everyone is unhappy, and everyone is searching, and everyone is both cruel and kind." *

Alice James finds herself on a cross-country train ride with a suitcase full of money and a bullet wound.  She has vanished from Prohibition-era Harlem with the help of a policeman after a bad liquor deal and as far as the Mafia knows, she's now dead.

She's as good as dead with lead poisoning.  With the help of a kind porter from the train named Max, Alice finds herself at the Paragon Hotel, the only all-black hotel in Portland.  The employees and residents of the Paragon certainly don't need an injured white woman in the hotel: they already have a dirty cop sniffing around their speakeasy, Ku Klux Klan leaving threats at their door, not to mention they each have secrets of their own they'd like to keep.

She's patched up by the grumpy Dr. Pendleton and befriends Blossom, a local star on the club circuit while doing her best to stay out of the way of Mavereen, the no-nonsense hotel manager who has eyes watching Alice.  Little does Mavereen know that Alice is watching all of them, too.

Not long after Alice's arrival, a little boy named Davy goes missing.  He was found orphaned as a baby and Blossom brought him to the hotel, where he has been "adopted" by the residents.  
The secrets of the Paragon residents are vulnerable with Alice asking so many questions about the missing boy.  They knew having a white woman around would only cause trouble and she won't stop until she finds out the truth.

While she searches for answers to Davy's disappearance, her story is also unfolding in alternating chapters.  We learn about Alice's childhood in Harlem, how she became connected with the Mafia, and the events that lead to her escape from the city with a case full of money and a bullet hole.

I am a huge fan of Lyndsay Faye.  Dust and Shadow and Jane Steele both floored me with the incredible writing and research.  Her latest novel has once again left me awestruck!  Faye manages to bring to life both Harlem and Portland in rich detail while diving in to heavy topics like violence, racism, mental illness, and sexuality.  The dialogue is snappy and true to the era and both mysteries were skillfully executed with pitch perfect tension that builds to stunning conclusions!

Thanks to G.P. Putnam's Sons and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.  The Paragon Hotel is scheduled for release on January 8, 2019.

*The quote included is from an advance readers copy and is subject to change upon final publication.

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The Paragon Hotel has a truly interesting historical setting as well as a well-paced plot and well-written characters. When you read a lot of fiction, it's hard to be truly delighted and surprised by a book, but this book did it for me.

Dually set in 1910's-20's Harlem and Portland, Oregon, The Paragon Hotel follows the stories of Mafia types on the East Coast as well as African-Americans on the West. A lot of people don't know this, but Oregon had a law on the books after the Civil War that disallowed ANY African-Americans from living there. So life was pretty edgy for those black people who did live or pass through there, and the Paragon Hotel serves as a haven for those folks. When Alice James, a white gun moll who has been working in an Italian organized crime syndicate in Harlem, lands on their doorstep, they are none too happy, but since she's nursing a bullet wound and they have a doctor, they take her in.

What follows is a rollicking tale of Alice's present and her past, interwoven masterfully while slowly revealing secrets in both stories. The dialogue is stylized, snappy and noir-ish, but the characters are full of heart. You get a full feeling of both settings, to the point where I imagined them so richly that I wanted to see them on film. A really enjoyable read!

Note: I was provided a courtesy galley from the publisher for review. I was not compensated for my review.

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I received this book through Netgalley.

With Paragon Hotel, Lyndsay Faye reaffirms that she’s one of the best authors out there of historical fiction. Not only does she illuminate historical eras with stunning realistic detail (see her Timothy Wilde trilogy set in 1840s New York), but she creates utterly human characters you can’t help but love and hate. The way she utilizes period patter with such flow leaves me in awe as an author.

In Paragon Hotel, we meet Nobody as she’s dying of a gunshot wound on a westbound train. She was trained to be an anti-Mafia spy, to become wallpaper in any room; she’s not even sure who she is anymore. The kind black porter, a veteran of the War, realizes her perilous condition and takes her to a dangerous place in order to save her life: the Paragon Hotel, an all-black establishment in Oregon, a state where black people are not allowed.

The historical facts behind the fiction are stunning. Oregon was established as a white utopia. In the 1920s, it was a hotbed of KKK activity. A black men were lynched for even looking at a white woman, and here is Nobody, requiring the aid of a black doctor and other hotel staff in order to stay alive. Each character is vivid and complex, with many secrets—which Nobody soon begins to uncover.

This is a book that is, in turns, beautiful and horrible… and all the more horrible because of the reality it is based upon. As in her other series, Faye does an incredible job of representing diverse perspectives on matters of race, sexuality, and mental illness.

This is one of the best books I have read in recent years, and I read a lot of books.

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The Paragon Hotel alternates between Italian Harlem, NYC and Portland, Oregon in 1921, when Oregon was fiercely represented by the KKK whose goal was to wipe its state clean of the blacks under the guise of upholding Christian values and putting America first.

I'm not one for novels with many characters as it makes it hard to keep track. So I thought The Paragon Hotel was going to be one of my DNF - not only did it have numerous characters, its writing style (frequent use of similes and idioms) was one I'm not used to even after a couple of hundred of pages in. But as I got deeper into the story, I fell in love with its characters and their stories.

And my, does Miss Faye know how to tell a story! Although it was a difficult beginning for me, reasons as stated above, I decided to stay on because I was intrigued by the female protagonist, Alice, or better known as 'Nobody', and I had this inkling that she had a lot to offer; and I was glad she proved me right.

After deciding to take on the offer of one of the big mafias in Harlem in exchange for protection, her life changed dramatically and so did her friendship with her best friend Nicolo. She got roped in and trained to be the eyes and ears of a Mafia boss known as the Spider, while Nicolo got his hands dirty when avenging for his dad who was murdered. Their differences set them off to different paths including one that led Nobody to the west, Oregon, Portland.

There, Nobody settled in Paragon Hotel, whose inhabitants were all blacks, except her. As her story in Oregon progressed, I was drawn to the lives and stories of its people in the hotel. I was enamored by Blossom, Alice's new-found friend and confidante, whose tongue-in-cheek remarks definitely tickled my fancy; and Max, the tall, dark handsome Pullman porter who captured Alice's heart with his looks and chivalry; also the kind and charitable Evelina, whose baked goods could charm the socks off of anyone.

All hell broke lose when one day, the much-loved child, Davy Lee, went missing. What happened to him? Was this the job of the KKK? Was someone being threatened? As Nobody tried to unravel its mystery, she realized there was more than meets the eye.

Running alongside Nobody's misadventures in Oregon, was her background story in Harlem, NYC. I was intrigued as to why she left Harlem in such distraught. What happened to her? Why did Nicolo, her childhood friend who loved her dearly, shoot her? And why did she leave Spider, her guardian and protector?

After ruminating on this novel for a couple of days, it got me to thinking, what an irony it was for Nobody when she was treated better at the Paragon Hotel than her own home in Harlem where she had to rely on her wit and her intelligence to survive the Mafia, while in a place foreign to her, she was treated kindly, although not without hostility and reservations, her being white, by some Debbie Downers. And it was also in Oregon, where racism was at its worst, that she found love and friendship, and ironically, trust.

This novel is seeped in secrets, shrouded in mystery, with twists and turns in corners you least expect. Stay for that, and sit in for the jazzy tunes in the time of Billie Holiday, played and sung in sultry smoke-filled speakeasies. Trust me, you'll be in for a treat!

I love reading the 'Historical Notes' right at the end too.

So now the following questions I have are, will Nobody ever return to Harlem? And will she ever reunite with Nicolo? What about the rivalry between The Spider and The Clutch Hand? And what about Blossom? Will she get what she wants?

Please give us a sequel, Miss Faye! I don't normally read sequels, but here I am asking for one.

Thank you Netgalley and Putnam Books for providing a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

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This book details the misadventures of Nobody (aka Alice James), switching between her growing up in Harlem, to her traveling to Portland and ending up at the Paragon Hotel. It's the strange characters that she encounters in her life that make it an interesting read.

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Everything by Lyndsay Faye is an instant hit! This such a great read. I loved the character development and the way the story twists and turns. You really feel for the characters and this pulls you to keep turning the pages until the very last one, wishing there were more.

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This book transports you to the 1920s, and not just to fancy free flappers, but a look at racial injustice and violence. The characters are well drawn and the setting comes to life. For fans of meaty historical fiction.

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The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye. I more than really liked this one. The writing is wonderful and the characters are even better. From description:

The year is 1921, and "Nobody" Alice James is on a cross-country train, carrying a bullet wound and fleeing for her life following an illicit drug and liquor deal gone horribly wrong. Desperate to get as far away as possible from New York City and those who want her dead, she has her sights set on Oregon: a distant frontier that seems the end of the line.

Full of well-drawn characters, I found The Paragon Hotel absolutely riveting. So many books and characters are entertaining but quickly forgettable, Faye's plot, characters, and prose will remain with you. One of my favorite books of the year. I read it in August, and I loved the book and Alice, Max, all of the Paragon Hotel employees, and most especially, Blossom Fontaine!

NetGalley/Penguin Group
Historical Mystery. Jan. 8, 2019. Print length: 432 pages.

Highly recommended!

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I wanted to like this book, I really did. I labored through 45 percent of it but could not honestly bring myself to continue reading. I am not sure why - it had all the right elements. The characters were developed well, the writing was wonderful, the story was good. And yet. And yet I struggled with it. I am unsure what led me to this development but ultimately, I gave up. I am giving it three stars because it was somewhat well-thought out, but the story took too long to develop and was not engaging enough for me, unfortunately.

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Lyndsay Faye has always been one of my favorite authors because her novels are top notch. We don't always appreciate the time we live in until we look into the past in a book or film. I love the feeling of time travel in this one. Friendship, love, and a action packed search and rescue will have you reading all nite. This story will stay in your mind's eye long after you finish reading.

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Lyndsay Faye is a master of historical fiction and The Paragon Hotel was yet another success! While the plot falls into a common setup, jumping between times/places to adjust the pace of the story, it's the language that really sets the book apart. In this case, we're seeing two parts on one young woman's life: the situation in which she currently finds herself in 1921 Portland, Oregon, and her life in New York and the events leading to her forced relocation. Each time period has a particular linguistic flavor, such that you could tell the point in the story apart even without the chapter headers.
Add to that how vibrantly real are all of her characters and you already have a great book, but as always with Faye's books, her attention to historical detail is stellar, which pushes it over the edge to outstanding. In this, she brings to life menacing elements of history that we've forgotten about: the earliest days of the Italian mob in New York's Harlem and the spread of the KKK into west. Poignant and captivating.

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There’s a lot of story in this book; at its heart, we follow a young fighter who is best known as Nobody.
May it be on the rough streets of mafia driven New York - or the diversified and developing city of Portland, as it fights against the new organization, the KKK.

Alice/Nobody is loyal, smart, and will get to the bottom of whatever trouble offends those she wants to protect.

Along with a hearty cast of characters, who have surprising nooks and crannies of their own – this story takes its time illustrating vibrant prohibition period times, and The thriving times of the 1920s on both coasts!

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This was quite an adventure! I had some difficulty getting into what was going on and sorting through the various characters but at some point, things just clicked and started making sense. Time frame is 1921. This is historical fiction with quite a few twists and turns that keep the reader engaged. There are two story lines told by the same character Nobody involving both the NY Mafia and Portland OR KKK. The hipster city on the west coast has an undeniably fascist history which I admit to being unaware of. The historical aspect was thoroughly researched and unflinchingly honest. The characters are quirky and likeable........all searching for safety, survival and hopefully love. There is racism, murder, intolerance, friendships, hate and love. It was at times madcap but I really loved it all.

I'd like to thank Net Galley for the chance to read the ARC. I will not be a stranger to this author!

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If you dream of being a flapper, drinking bootleg gin while listening to Billie Holiday in a smoke-filled Harlem nightclub - this is the book for you. I have been a devoted fan of Lyndsay Faye since JANE STEELE but now I am at the stalker level. Whatever the historical period she is writing about, she creates such remarkable characters who speak intelligent snark and exudes charm and the language and setting are spot-on. You believe that you are in 1920's racially divided dangerous Portland where a single white woman on death's doorstep running from the New York mafia finds herself a new family of sorts and learns about the many faces of evil and love. Oh, dear reader, you will positively fall for Nobody James and the unusual gang at the Paragon Hotel. Plus, as an added bonus, I can now swear in Italian. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy of this charmer.

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I didn't need to know the title or plot of this book before requesting it, because Lyndsay Faye cemented her place in my "Must Read" list with Gods of Gotham. Her talent is taking the reader and instantly placing them in a new place/time with no real adjustment required. She writes it like she just came back from a visit there and is very good at telling people everything she saw.

I said the plot was secondary to my reasons for wanting to read this as soon as possible, but it became third in importance once I met Nobody. What an amazing character. I didn't care what she was doing as long as I was reading about her, whether in Portland or her past in Harlem. I loved the description of how she became whoever she needed to be depending on the situation, a con artist whose only goal is to stay safe.

Lyndsay Faye has staked her claim on the late 19th/early 20th century fiction, and I can't wait to see where (and when) she takes us next.

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This book is about love and all the different versions of it.

Alice is a very interesting character with a very interesting backstory. The book goes between her backstory and when she's in Portland. This is the first time where I've read a book that splits the story and don't feel interrupted. The setting for both Portland and New York (really, Harlem) is very vivid.

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I loved this book. I loved the flashbacks, I loved Nobody, Blossom, and Evie. All the characters had distinctive personalities. I loved how the story unfolded, and I didnt see it coming. I couldn't stop thinking about the book and couldn't put it down. 10/10 would recommend and read again.

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