I am not entirely sure how I feel about this book. Parts of it I found fascinating and well done and others sort of just felt "off." I think our students will really like it, though, so I have ordered a few copies for the library. Thank you

I took a chance and stepped out of my comfort zone taking this book on. I'm not a fan of science fiction, but wanted to give this one a chance. I just didn't love this one. The time traveling made keeping up with the plot too intense, and you had to really concentrate to keep up. I wanted a book that didn't include a lot of concentration but would kept me interested and quickly turning pages. This one just missed the mark for me.

Time travel books can sometimes be difficult to tie all the pieces together. I enjoyed this book but did have a few sections where I was slightly confused. Overall, the story was engaging and the main character kept me enthralled throughout the book!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy to honestly review.

The concept of the commercialization of time travel as an industry combining with an isolated closed circle mystery is so promising I really thought there was no way The Paradox Hotel wouldn’t at least be a four-star read for me. And while I say I did enjoy this thriller, especially the wise-cracking protagonist January who couldn’t be more fed up with the ultra-wealthy patrons of the hotel, I think the pacing in this story dragged just a little too much for the final payoff.

The sheer ingenuity behind the worldbuilding of this take on a Sci-Fi mystery is something that’s going to stick with me the most here, particularly in the ways people gradually start to experience debilitating effects from prolonged exposure to time travel, like the POV character January. It’s a concept I love seeing explored in Sci-Fi, and the shadowy afterimages of events in time that plague January allows her to be an unreliable narrator in a way that was so totally unique to the thriller genre. I do wish the author did more with the major events he would reference as part of January’s past field assignments - which was entirely limited to easily recognizable tragedies in human history like Nazi Germany and the Titanic. And while this was science fiction and not historical fiction… these low-hanging fruit references did feel a little uninspired sometimes.

January herself was another highlight here however. And while I think some may be bothered by her endless wisecracks and general prickliness, I personally loved it. Her questionable professionalism as the head of the hotel’s security team was just plain fun to watch, even if it's the type of antics you'd think would have gotten her fired long ago. I will say, as more of her troubled past is revealed and the story instead begins to fixate on her relationship with her dead girlfriend and how this physically haunts her every waking moment, the story becomes a lot less fun. Which is where I get into my major hangup with this book.

The Paradox Hotel is absolutely a Sci-Fi thriller - as it is rightly marketed. But it also wants to be a commentary on capitalism and the abuse of the working class, and a character study of a traumatized woman refusing to come to terms with her own grief. Each of these plot points have very different tones that I don’t think ever fully meshed together in the story overall. What I felt was a strong start to the novel eventually petered off into a conclusion that took too many sideroads and tangents to reach an end that was wholly satisfying.

Overall, I think anyone that enjoys a closed circle mystery - especially those set in the backdrop of a hotel - will get some enjoyment out of this. The Sci-Fi twist on the narrative with the time travel aspect thrown in was just an added boon for me. I only wish the Paradox Hotel had a little more of a clear vision in mind when it went this route, even with a strong lead character to carry the story.

Thank you to the publisher Ballantine Books for providing an e-ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

January Cole is the head of security at The Paradox Hotel, where guests wait until they can board their time travel flights to any points in the past. And January is suffering from some sort of affliction that enables her to see glimpses into the future, and right now, she’s glimpsing the corpse of a murder victim. That’s the backdrop for this unique and interesting story that blends science fiction with a murder mystery. The story can get a little confusing, there’s a lot of jumping around time frames, and the scenes sometimes aren’t all that clear to the reader, but there’s a decent plot, and the concept is intriguing enough that you stay with the story, as your interest is definitely piqued. A good genre-crossing book, definitely different. I received an ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not really into books about time travel but I wanted to try this one out and it was really good. I highly recommend it especially if you're looking to try something out of your comfort zone.

I liked the premise of this book about a hotel that operates time travel trips for tourists. However, I couldn’t get past my extreme dislike of the house detective January. Do you know what would be original, making the protagonist an even tempered, well adjusted, polite person, rather than a tough-talking asshole who evades the rules and lies to her employer. Don’t look for that in this book. January is a walking cliché. I didn’t like “The Warehouse” either, so I guess I should just avoid this author. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

The Paradox Hotel is an exciting new take on time travel. The hotel allows people to travel to other points in time, for a price. The price to keep the hotel, the issues with people getting stuck in time, the ghosts, and the upcoming sale make it a fast-paced story with lots of twists. For me, it was a little hard to keep up with but overall I really enjoyed the story.

3/5 Stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books for providing me with an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fairly brilliant. I had no idea what to expect going into this book. I loved it! It is fast paced and action packed with time warped twists and turns. The characters are deep and interesting. January is strong willed, stubborn, abrasive, snarky, funny and loving all rolled into one fierce package. The world building and time travel concepts were captivating. I truly enjoyed every minute of this book. A real keep you up at night page turner. Excellent.

Thank you NetGalley for the review copy of this book. It was an outstanding surprise.

The Paradox Hotel was intriguing in a lot of ways. Someone figured out time travel. Those with the means have the ability to time travel for leisure. There is one main rule - look but don't touch. What happens if you disrupt the past too much is still unknown.

The Timetravel Enforcement Agency (TEA) is around to make sure people don't disrupt time too much. January is the main protagonist. She is, frankly, a terrible person. Incapable of love. Mainly because she lost her only love. I really struggled through this book for a lot of reasons, but my dislike for January probably topped it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an early copy for review purposes.

Paradox Hotel is the first novel by Rob Hart that I have had the pleasure to read. This book was a little more mainstream than some others I have been reading recently, but that in no way detracted from my enjoyment. It was part thriller, part mystery, and part sci-fi. The setting is in the near future, with time travel available to the 1% from a special time port. Travelers depart from and return to the Paradox Hotel before and after their trips. Its an unusual settling for a time travel story! Most people would assume that you would follow characters in their adventures, but the story almost entirely takes place in the hotel. With very strong modern characters, a good mystery, and excellent pacing, the story really keeps you turning pages. Somehow the author managed to work in a very emotional and complicated story about loss and grief into the novel as well.
My expectations were non existent but I wrapped up the story very pleased with the overall experience. If I had to nit pick, I would say that the ending wasn't the strongest, and I found it to be only ok, and not as satisfying as I would have hoped. That being said, the novel is easy to recommend and I will keep an eye out for other work by Rob Hart.

This was a different one for me. I am not quite sure how to review it. The writing was fast paced and exciting. The characters well drawn and intriguing. However, I felt lost. A lot. I never quite knew what was really happening and therefore had a hard time investing in the story. Ruby was hands down the star of the show. I really appreciated the effortless diversity in the characters and the calling out of racism as everyday practice. All in all I would recommend this to my patrons but at the same time I am not quite sure what I am recommending and maybe that isn't such a bad thing?


Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books and NetGalley for this ARC.

"“There are a lot of things we still don’t understand about time travel. For example, why we can go backward but not forward. We know time conforms to the block universe model that…” He pauses, sees that he’s losing the room. “Okay, think of it like this. Time is like a pond. When you drop a pebble in a pond it creates ripples. The ripples are temporary . It’s not long before they dissipate. When we move through time, we create some ripples.”"

Our protagonist, January, works with time travel. In the future, time travel is another form of vacation or enjoyment. You can go back to the time of the dinosaurs, as long as you follow the rules. And if you don't, January is there to fix it.

But all that time travel had had consequences, and January has become Unstuck. She finds herself slipping forwards and backwards in time, seeing things others cannot. Alongside January is the snarky drone Ruby.

I was really excited by the premise and by the first few pages, unfortunately I had trouble following this book for most of it.

Thank you NetGalley and random house for giving me an advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review.

In The Paradox Hotel, Rob Hart puts a hotel at the edge if time, specifically two miles from a timeport where its patrons dress in period garb and head off to their favorite places in history; kind of like HBO's Westworld but that its any time period and anywhere in the world. The main rule of time travel, don't leave a mark history and don't bring contraband back with you (i.e. no dinosaur eggs people!). The time stream may support tiny ripples, but for the travelers wanting to break the rules and leave an impact, there are Time Enforcement Agents who go back and fix things. The government is about to auction off the timeport to the highest bidder and the four people interested in purchasing it are staying at the hotel. Weird things start to happen which suggests that someone is messing with time and its January Cole's job, as the head of security, to solve the mystery before it's too late. Just one problem, because of her constant time traveling she is "unstuck" meaning she experiences time slips and is not a very reliable narrator because she can't always differentiate between past/present/future moments.

I loved the snark of the MC, January and the interactions she has with her smart drone, Ruby. The idea for this story is definitely 4 stars, but the execution felt a bit chaotic thus my ultimate rating of 3 stars. With so much going on you definitely have to stay focused while reading. It's definitely more of a speculative fiction murder/mystery than a book about time travel. I think fans of Blake Crouch's stories may enjoy this one. True rating: 3.5 stars.

This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for review purposes. All opinions are my own.

DNF at 34%. Even the incredible narration of Emily Woo Zeller can’t keep me interested in this one. This is way too confusing and quite frankly just not interesting.

January Cole is having a particularly rough day. The Paradox Hotel, where she runs security, is being inundated with wealthy guests whose “flights” back in time to ancient Egypt, the Triassic Period, the Renaissance and more have been delayed at the timeport next door. They’re demanding suitably upscale accommodations as they wait. On top of that, the government, which has been running the hotel and the timeport, has decided to sell the complex because it’s not been turning a profit. Four trillionaires are now at the hotel, getting ready to bid on the property. Somehow, a few baby dinosaurs are running around, and the cherry on top of it all is that January has found a dead body in one of the guest rooms — but only she can see it.

Underlying the craziness is that January is “Unstuck” — because of the many times she traveled into the past herself to stop people in the present from breaking the time travel rules, her brain is getting unmoored from time. She sees things she’s experienced in the past (in the location they happened, so just in the hotel) as well as some things that are going to happen, whether in five minutes or two hours. Her condition is progressing enough that the medication she takes to alleviate the effects doesn’t work all the time, and she is staring down a near-future where her brain goes to mush. But she is determined to solve the mystery of the murdered man; protect the trillionaires, each of whom is facing death threats, and to help figure out why time is coming unmoored around the whole hotel — and not just for her.

The Paradox Hotel is a pretty cool novel about time travel, with a murder and several other mysteries all mixed together. It’s also quite a bit about love and grief: January stays at her job because it’s the only way for her to have a connection with her dead girlfriend (her time slips give her opportunities to “be with” her again). January is a pretty tough nut to crack; she’s acerbic and mean to everyone, even her friends, and she lets out her pain on others. It’s not a really pleasant narrator to hang out with for a whole book. I was pleasantly surprised, though, at the poignant ending, which made me like the book as a whole more. It made it feel there was a reason for the unpleasantness. I still don't know if I would choose to plow through another book with a similar narrator and often-bitter style, though, if given a heads-up.

The nitty-gritty: A fun mystery with interesting characters and relationships, The Paradox Hotel was full of good ideas but ended up confusing me more than anything.

This was a strange little story, but I ended up really enjoying it after a bit of a rocky start. I thought the book was going to focus more on time travel adventures, but that’s not at all what it’s about. Instead, the story takes place entirely in the Paradox Hotel, which services rich travelers who have booked expensive trips to the past through a time travel hub called the Einstein Intercentury Timeport—kind of like staying at the Disneyland Hotel if you’re spending a long weekend at Disneyland. So, to reiterate: there isn’t really any time travel here, only glimpses of the past seen through the eyes of our main character, January Cole.

January is the house detective-slash-security officer, and she loves her job, which involves keeping track of the many hotel guests, watching out for security breaches and making sure no one breaks the rules of time travel. But January is suffering from a condition known as Unstuck. Before she became head of security, she worked as a timestream agent, accompanying guests on trips back in time. The exposure to time travel messed up her brain, and now she occasionally “slips” into the past, experiencing events and conversations that have already happened. These time slips are becoming more and more frequent, and January is worried that eventually the hotel manager will consider her a liability and will ask her to leave.

But one thing she loves about these slips is that she gets to visit with her dead girlfriend Mena, who was killed in a gas explosion in the hotel’s kitchen. But are those brief moments with Mena simply past memories, or is she actually speaking with Mena’s ghost? January is even more confused when she finds a dead body in one of the hotel rooms—a body only she can see. With her trusty robot assistant Ruby by her side, January decides to investigate. But with the impending sale of the hotel, a fierce winter storm, and increasing time slips into the past, January is having trouble doing her job, especially when it’s hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t.

The overall vibe of The Paradox Hotel is a light, humorous mystery that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I really love Rob Hart’s writing style, and his humor and dialog are so well done. There are some wacky moments in the story, most notably a storyline about three baby dinosaurs that are brought back from a time trip illegally. The dinos end up causing all sorts of havoc in the hotel, attacking guests and running loose through the corridors. The characters are a bit overblown at times, and some of the situations are on the absurd side, but it was all good fun. Even the occasional violent moments didn’t feel very heavy, and I liked the consistent tone throughout.

The story takes place in 2072, so it's plausible that there would be a way to time travel for fun and profit. I loved the idea of the Einstein, a theme park-like business where the rich can go back in time and witness important events throughout history. The travelers even dress up for the particular place and time they're traveling to, and timestream agents accompany them to keep everyone safe. Hart populates his story with quirky hotel employees, each with their own personalities. I especially liked Cameo, a non-binary reservations clerk, and Mbaye, a chef who works in the hotel restaurant.

But there were some negatives for me. Unfortunately, I just didn’t like January at all, and that kept me from completely embracing this story. January is a jerk. She’s rude to everyone she meets, even coworkers she’s known for years. She’s horrible to Ruby, her assistant. At least with Ruby, January feels justified in being rude. It’s only a machine without feelings, right? But my heart wept for poor little Ruby, who did everything January asked it to do and then some. I get it, the love of her life is dead and she can’t move past that. But January’s poor treatment of just about every single character in the story wore on me after a while.

I also found the story to be confusing at times. Not that time travel is easy to understand, but parts of the plot didn’t make much sense to me. For example, if time travel leads to being Unstuck, why is January the only character in the story who suffers from it? Speaking of which, January’s time slips were extremely jarring, and I often lost track of whether we were in the past or the present. Hart jumps in and out of these slips without any warning, and I found myself having to go back and reread pages to figure out where I was in the story. Or maybe that was done deliberately, because January probably didn’t get much warning either. I also found that there were way too many characters to keep track of. In addition to all the hotel employees—and we meet a lot of them—there are the people who are bidding on the hotel, and I’ll admit after a while all their names started to blend together.

But even though I disliked January, I was surprised to discover my favorite element of the story was the relationship between January and Mena. I loved Mena’s ability to see past January’s acerbic personality to the damaged child underneath and actually understand her. Mena was a fascinating character. She seems to pop up just when January needs a pep talk, and because she’s Unstuck, it makes perfect sense to January that she keeps running into past Mena. I also loved the gentle way that Mena is able to coax January into admitting why she is the way she is and why everyone she meets seems to hate her, almost like a therapist. The reason for January’s prickly personality is revealed late in the story, and while I didn’t completely forgive her behavior, at least I was able to finally sympathize with her.

The last twenty percent of the story was fast-paced and exciting, and Hart manages to tie up his many story threads in satisfying and believable ways. The ending surprised me in a good way, and I loved how unexpectedly sweet and emotional it was. The Paradox Hotel might not be perfect, but I’m glad I read it, and I look forward to Rob Hart’s next book.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

This science fiction adventure borrows mystery/thriller elements, exploring a conspiracy that extends outside time. The story starts in a near future world where time travel is controlled and monitored by the US government. It's a source of tourism, but there are set rules to visiting the past so that the timeline isn't altered. Protagonist January was once a law enforcement agent that sussed out criminals trying to bend or break those rules. Her career of moving through the timestream at a high frequency resulted in a condition where she mentally slips through time and will eventually progress to a coma-like state. Benched to run security at the main hotel for time traveling tourists, January is gearing up to host a summit that will finalize the privatization of time travel, auctioned off to one of four self-satisfied trillionaires who each have their own plans for getting their hands on the past.

The elements I loved most in the book were twofold. There's a great cast of queer characters. January's a lesbian, her love interest is a trans woman, and there's a prominent side character who is non-binary. Also, January delivers some really awesome insults, especially hurled at the ultra-wealthy and powerful. I can only aspire to her creativity and wish I had the opportunity and boldness to mimic her in that regard.

Unfortunately, the story didn't grip me to the degree I hope for in the best thrillers. The tension lacked a sense of urgency despite the dinosaurs, assassination attempts, and timey-wimey dangers. Also, the science fiction elements weren't the kind to be fascinating or mind-boggling, but they somehow were still difficult for me to follow in terms of the rules and limitations of time travel for this world. I braced myself each time a new round of explanations was necessary because I didn't get far with them. Finally, there are themes in this story about grief and vulnerability that could have been very powerful. However, I didn't find the story engaged with them on a deep or personal enough level to say something profound or trigger an emotional reaction in me. I think part of the issue was that the characters fell into trope-y roles and stock personalities that prevented me from connecting with them on an empathetic level. In some ways, their actions and emotional trajectories were predictable because they were following a common path.

I don't think this is a book with a bad message or one that I would warn readers away from. It just didn't live up to either of the genres it drew from in my opinion, and I wish the characters were more fully realized. I think readers who enjoy smartass detectives and time travel will enjoy the story if they're content to engage with the tropes at surface level.

At once a dazzlingly time-twisting murder mystery and a story about grief, memory, and what it means to—literally—come face-to-face with our ghosts, The Paradox Hotel is another unforgettable speculative thrill ride from acclaimed author Rob Hart.

This book was so interesting! I have always loved the anything to do with time and time travel. And of course this gave me a West world vibe but with time travel. Instead of robots you actually could pay huge amounts of money to go to a different time period.

January Cole is security for the Paradox Hotel when things go start to go wrong with the timeline and a murder that no one can see.

You have to pay close attention to this one and to the terms of time travel as they are so far into the time stream with different rules than we know.

Thank you randomhouse and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.