I received an advance copy via NetGalley.

<i>The Paradox Hotel</i> is a locked-room murder mystery set in a snowed-in hotel for time travelers. It's a scifi thriller with breathless tension and incredible heart--really, it's an exploration of grief and anger in an utterly innovative way. It's the month of January and I already know this book will be one of my best reads this year.

January is head of security at a hotel where the wealthiest of the wealthy stay before embarking on time travel adventures throughout the past. The American government-run facility is about to go for sale, and tensions are high as the most elite people in the world come together to place their bids. January has her own problems, though. She's Unstuck, meaning her past work deploying as a time cop has left her slightly unmoored from the current timeline--not necessarily a bad thing, as her increasingly instability enables her to relive moments with her dead girlfriend. However, when she sees a murdered man that no one else can see--and time begins to skip around for everyone in the hotel, even as heavy snow entraps them all--January realizes there's more at stake than her job or her sanity.

I love a good time travel story, not only for the sheer fun of it, but because I respect the difficulties in writing it. Time travel is tricky to get right because it can end up a snarled, confusing mess. But author Rob Hart--wow. I've never read him before, but he's earned my awe and respect. He plays with so many mystery and scifi genre tropes here and makes them WORK. I mean, he even brings in dinosaurs! There's a straight-up ode to Jurassic Park. Even more, as the action races along, the book explores serious emotional issues around grief, love, and friendship. The hotel staff is like a big found-family for January, even though she treats them terribly in her grief. The ending escalates everything in an action-packed profound way.

This novel is the first one to go on my awards shortlist for books released in 2022. If it's not on everyone's lists, I'll be sorely disappointed.

I am a fan of books written about time travel and this one did not disappoint. I loved that in this novel, time travel is used as a tourist attraction. Their motto being "look but don't touch." Also, an interesting quirk in this one is the idea of traveling so much through out time affects the human mind that a person can be lost within it.

Entertaining from start to finish. I loved the humor in it.

HOLY SHIT THIS BOOK DID NOT DISAPPOINT! When I first read the synopsis, I was worried it was too good to be true because it's a lot to pack in a single book but the author did it and did it SO WELL!

This book has everything:
✔️ time travel
✔️ supernatural elements
✔️ snarky sarcastic main character
✔️ conspiracy theories
✔️ murder mystery
✔️ shit hitting the fan left and right
✔️ LGBTQ+ characters

From the very first page, I could tell this was going to be at LEAST a 4 star read just based on how it was written.

The main character, January, has a condition from too much time travel called being 'Unstuck' that basically makes her hallucinate the past and future.
Reading those slips at first was weird but I got used to the tells of when she's not seeing the present. It was such an awesome way to present her back story and introduce conflicts.

I do wish she was a little LESS of an asshole, but it's who her character is and how all her emotional baggage affected her.

Now...
This is 100% if not my #1 book of 2022 (calling it now), it will AT LEAST stay in my top 5 for the year and maybe ever.

I've already pre-ordered the book because DAMN I need to own this!

A HUGE thank you to NetGalley, the author Rob Hart, and the publisher for allowing me to read the ARC of this amazing book.

Time travel shenanigans? Check. Locked-room mystery? Check. Architecture with secrets? Check. Damaged heroine who hides behind her sass and sarcasm? Check. Are these all among my reading fetishes? CHECK. It's like the author dove into my brain and wrote a book with all the things I love reading about most. So I was already predisposed to like this book, but it was genuinely well-written. I cared about the characters and desperately needed to know what happened (such that I stayed up well past my bedtime to finish the book, a rarity these days).

Oh my goodness but I loved the story! The constructs, the world building, the characters, and the plot all blended together perfectly to create an exciting action-packed tale full of science and tech and secrets and lies. But at its heart it is also a story about relationships and the families we build for ourselves and I really loved that this component was worked in seamlessly. It's no small feat to craft a story with heart that is also an adventure story that incorporates science fiction and time travel, office politics and socioeconomics, life and death into a wild and wacky ride. I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish and tip my hat to Hart for a brilliant tale that was conceived and executed magnificently.

Time travel for the rich and powerful mixed with the drama of a large hotel complex can be utterly mind-blowing. Scientist have created a portal where wealthy people can travel back in time as an adventure trip. The hotel was built to house these people before they leave on their trip and when they come back. The hotel and the portal are government run but despite the huge prices they charge the guest it is somehow losing money so they are seeking to sell to a private owner. All interested parties meet at the hotel during a snow storm and are trapped there. time begins to slip inside the hotel. "ghost" begin to appear and the head of security keeps seeing things that are going to happen in the future as well as her dead girlfriend from the past. Chaos ensues. Will they figure out what is causing the time slippage before the whole facility is destroyed or not.
The book is an interesting read sometimes confusing and hard to get through but enjoyable.

January Cole, is a retired time travel agent with grit and sass, is head of security at The Paradox Hotel where the insanely rich come to vacation back in time. However, the hotel is not doing so great and during the middle of a huge snowstorm, four insanely rich bidders are looking to buy the time travel program and hotel from the government. The kicker is January is Stage 2 Unstuck where glimpses of the past mix with the present day... and now is she potentially seeing the future too?

This was a fun read that kept me on my toes. It was a little bit of work at the beginning keeping track of the cast of characters, especially when the rules of time are getting muddled. But as soon as I really got into the novel everything started to click and was much easier to follow. Suspenseful and interesting story line with an exciting and slightly vulnerable protagonist. An all-around good read that I would recommend to anyone who likes a little bit of science fiction. 4 stars.

Review based on digital Uncorrected Proof from NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine. Thank you :)

Solidly entertaining read. No real complaints. My hope for 2022 is to get lost in more entertaining read. This was a simple enjoyable read, and that’s a good thing. Not every book needs to be a groundbreaking, genre defying read. If your looking for a fun read to settle in with before bed, this will satisfy that.

Loved this high action sci-fi mystery. I could not put it down and was sad when it ended. Would love to learn more about the interesting characters that work in the Paradox Hotel and I hope that the author brings us back to them.

Well, this one was up and down for me, but I think it's a 4 overall. To begin with, it seemed a little clunky and cliched---there is a hardbitten smart-aleck female cop. There is a prince of Saudi Arabia with initials that killed a journalist. ?? Seemed a bit sloppy. Well, THEN the action started and I got sucked completely in and really enjoyed the fast pace and didn't want to put it down. THEN the ending happened and I felt a little like I did not completely grasp what happened.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

This concept was promising but I found the execution to be confusing. The slipping between time (while it made sense for the story) was jarring and had me rereading pages and paragraphs to try and figure out where/when I was. The Unstuck premise was interesting and I understand why January’s narration was so difficult - but it wasn’t easy to handle.

I wanted to like the main character but never really connected. She was just a generic “female badass” type. Some of her remarks were funny, others were just rude.

I liked the representation - non-binary, trans, lesbian rep right off the bat. The commentary on politics was relevant and I enjoyed it. I just feel this would have been more satisfying as a story where we just saw January solving crimes throughout time!

This is definitely a book for people who love mysteries and sci-fi aspects but also for someone who is able to really pay attention!

I’m a sucker for a time travel story.

When I found The Paradox Hotel, I was hooked on the idea that a time travel hotel would exist. And a murder mystery on top of that? Sign me up!

January is an agent for the TEA (not the drink, but rather a time travel agency), who is noticing some weird things happening at the Paradox Hotel. Weirder than usual, shall we say. A murder scene only she can see, baby velociraptors, and her funny turns with time are just the start.

Once I started reading the book, I was slightly less enthusiastic about it. January has had a lot of crummy stuff happen to her, as you’ll find out, so she comes off as more abrasive than a Brillo pad. I get what the author was going for here, and that January’s been through a lot, but it almost felt like too much abrasiveness. She pushes people away in a way that makes it difficult to believe that anyone would still care about her.

Besides that, I did enjoy the story, and the mystery. I think anyone who enjoys time travel as a science fiction subgenre will appreciate it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read The Paradox Hotel as an eARC!

January Cole is the head of security at The Paradox Hotel. This is where the super wealthy come to stay for their time travel trips. For time travel, there is one big rule -- look but do not touch or change anything. January used to go into Einstein (the time travel system) and stop people from changing history, in order to keep huge ripples from happening and destroying life as we know it. However, if you spend too much time in the time stream, you might become "unstuck," where your mind may begin to see things from the past or the future unbidden. When it was determined that January was unstuck, they transferred her from her job at Einstein to being the head of security at the Paradox. Unfortunately, being unstuck comes in stages, the third stage where you are locked inside and are in a coma on the outside. January has hit stage two, but she is trying to hide this from everyone or they make her leave the Paradox. Right now, things are coming apart at the seams at the Paradox, and she may be the only one to save time from completely falling apart.... but so many things seem intent on stopping her from fixing this impossible situation.

This is quite a twisty, turny, mystery. With January moving back and forth in time, I was not 100% sure where I was in time, all of the time, until the future caught up with her and became the present and was then seen again, in real time. Rob Hart was quite creative in the way he told this tale, and I was fully engaged, despite a few moments in the read where I was just confused. I always figured it out when I read a bit further. I could never have figured this mystery out on my own. There are breadcrumbs, but Hart created many surprises at every turn to keep the reader guessing. The time travel idea was also an interesting one to ponder throughout this read. If you enjoy mysteries and science fiction, you will love The Paradox Hotel.

Thanks you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

This sounded like a really unique and interesting read but unfortunately I found myself disappointed by it and worst of all largely bored with it. The author spends far too much time telling us how abrasive the protagonist January is and very little time on the showing. She is certainly a woman who gets to the point and has zero interest in social norms but she is very good at her job and the constant repetition of her as harsh was annoying. I have no problem with rough around the edges characters and the difficult ones can often be the most fun but unfortunately her character felt incomplete and lacking in details or personality to round her out. The author seemed more concerned with scoring political points than making a book worth reading. There is an AI drone that is an It, which makes sense, but then we meet a They and since it’s a future novel I was confused if They were a human or another robot type since there’s very little description of the secondary characters. There is constantly a belittling of white characters just because of their skin tone that was jarring as was the random anti blue line statement out of nowhere which also didn’t fit the year or world. It was very hard to keep straight the other random characters who were never given enough detail to make them memorable.

What should have been a fascinating story set in this by itself incredibly interesting location was weighed down by a go nowhere plot and awful characters. The mystery is so thin and so completely sidelined that in an ordinary book would have not been worth finishing. The author ties things up with way too many things left unvisited, including the far more interesting parts, that I’m annoyed I bothered getting through it. Skip this one. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Thank you first to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of this book. Mystery thrillers and time travel are both of interest to me and so I was interested to see how this would play out.

I don’t typically read sci-fi but the praise from Riley Sager encouraged me to at least give it a go. The plot is promising, but there are MANY layers and characters to follow so the execution fell a bit flat for me (mostly because I felt confused!). You definitely have to pay close, close attention and maybe you will find more satisfaction in the book than I did.

I did enjoy particular aspects of the book including some of the time travel quests (more! I want more!), the AI robot, the story between the hotel’s two founders, etc. And given the ambition of the plot, I’d give this book 3.5 stars (rounded up).

This book is unique to anything that I have ever read before, and Im totally here for it.
We are following January who used to be a time agent, making sure that the people that the people who visit different time lines don't do anything stupid like try and change what happened.. Now she is working as head of security at the Paradox Hotel. The Paradox is where lots of people who have been time traveling pass through.. Lately though she has been experiencing being Unstuck from time. Meaning that she can relive things that have happened in the past, and things that could happen in the future. So when she get a tingle that she is about to experience something, and ends up finding a body in one of the rooms, a body that nobody else happens to see, January realizes that something is definitely wonky in the hotel.

As January is trying to figure out who killed our mystery man, we are also dealing with a whole lot of other bizarre things going on, like a trio of little dinosaurs running around the hotel, and the sun setting a full hour before its supposed to. It seems like everyone knows more than they are telling even with all this weird potentially dangerous stuff going down. Its up to January to uncover whats really going on.

I had no idea what I was going to get when I started this stor , and I loved everything about it, from the mystery and sci-fi thrillery elements to Januarys Unstuck moments that give us so much insight into who she is and how she got that way, to Ruby and her googly eyes. It didn't exactly end how I thought it would but it was satisfying and everything was mostly wrapped up.

I wold definitely read this story again, and read more by this author. I can't wait to see what else he comes out with!

A fun sci-fi romp. I was quickly taken in by the plot and the characters and couldn't put the book down. It does so great world building, which is always a plus. However, the last chunk of the book and the ending was a bit of a let down as it felt like it just sort of wrapped up too quickly. However, I'd still recommend it.

I've noticed a recent uptick in interest of time travel and changing the "timeline" of history lately, both in movies and books. This book actually reminded me a lot of the show Travelers.

The book started out at a breakneck speed, and the reader is constantly having to determine whether January, the main character, is in the now, or a "slip" - a moment that either hasn't actually happened yet, or a flashback. I think the sudden changes from present into the past/future helped build up distortion. As you read, you realize that the timeline January's hotel is trying so hard to preserve, is crumbling from within, seemingly at an exponential pace.

I could have done without the extreme embellishments of flashbacks to Mena, January's dead lover. But I completely understand why it was so heavily built in.

The end of the book was honestly pure chaos, and the only reason I am not rating 5 stars is due to the fact that I couldn't keep the characters straight. I had trouble remembering the significance of each hotel employee, and which one was "good" and which one was "bad."

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Well, I hate to call a DNF this early in the year, but 2022 is the year for good books and good vibes only.

I was positive going into this one, as it was highly anticipated for me because the premise sounded amazing! But I should’ve know that trying to include elements of sci-fi, murder mystery & time travel all packed into one book just sounded too good to be true.

The first chapter was very disorienting & the ones to follow were nothing short of chaotic. I was struggling to get a grasp on the world building and instead was met with immature characters and a lot of unnecessary language for my taste. The humor was also just not my cup of tea.

Once we got to the actual murder mystery aspect, I didn’t care enough about the characters to be invested because there was very little depth to them.

Overall I wanted to love this one, but glad I knew early on that this just wasn’t the book for me!

DNF at 7%

Thank you so much to Ballantine Books for a review copy in exchange for an honest review!

I tried to get through this one. I really did. After the what seems like the obligatory gay main character (which didn't add anything useful tot he plot) what could have been a good plot idea was exposed. a problem was the writing plodded. I found it too easy to put down. I actually read 4 books while trying to get through this. 2 of them were David Weber's who does not write short novels. At time the plot moved along and it almost seemed like I could start to get into the book then the writer threw in what I guess was supposed to be a twist or flashback which totally derailed the interest. Sorry, the idea has great potential, but needs a rewrite to get it moving along better.