After helping out an older woman by driving her to a prison to visit her North Korean brother, Yewon begins dreaming of a hotel with endless doors and keys to them. She's more dismayed than terrified by the dream, but when she wakes finds herself trapped in her daily life. She feels stuck in her town, and both wants to leave for Seoul but keeps finding reasons not to go. Her brother is stationed up north near the border, her sister is suffering from a terrible tragedy, and her mother spends hours cleaning ancestors' bones in the tub.

This is not a horror novel. Rather, the author is less concerned with plot than with the sense of loss, estrangement, grief, dislocation and loneliness of the characters. The story is about surviving trauma, but also about the passing down through generations of this pain, so there is a profound collective sense of disconnection, loss and pain, but that is not spoken of.

Author Yeji Y. Han beautifully conveys this through a sense of claustrophobia Yewon has of her life, as well as the almost fog that permeates her brain. The author's prose is beautiful, and builds images that lingered after I finished the novel: the elderly man building a house of doors, the numerous windows, all the locked doors in the hotel...

There are moments of surrealism, including the very end, that at times left me a little confused, but if you're looking for a highly atmospheric, disturbing and tragic story, this is for you.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Zando for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Incredibly eerie and well written, Ham examines trauma from the Korean War along with its lingering and residual effects of generational trauma (literally). The book is hard to explain but the imagery is extremely evocative and the writing thought provoking.

I am nearly finished with this book and I contemplated on whether to finish it or not. I have to say that this book is not for me. I am having some trouble following along with the dream part of it and actual reality. The writing is OK but sometimes it feels choppy. I have not connected with one character in the book. I appreciate the traditions of Korean families, but do they really wash bones in the bathtub? Once finished I will give a more detailed review of this title, but I had expectations of wanting more from this book based on the information

Thank you #TheInvisibleHotel #NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this title

This book was an interesting challenge for me. I went in expecting literary horror and came out the other side reeling from the deep exploration of grief and trauma. Much more a story about the generational ripples of trauma as result of the war over a dark gothic horror story. I enjoyed the book overall but at times found the writing to be monotonous and slow moving.

This was such an interesting story! At the heart of it seems to be a reflection of grief and mental health and isolation and motherhood, all in the shadows of the Korean War. The imagery is fantastic, creepy and haunting and so striking that you can't help but devour each individual word and how the sentences string together. There's a constant fight as to what is reality and what is delusion, and the author plays with the battle so well, toying with the reader but also drawing lines in a clear, beneficial way. Can't wait to see what comes next out of this author!

What an interesting and atmospheric story! The bones in the bathtub really got me, and I loved the confusing nightmarish quality to the main character's reality/dreams. I do wish there was more of a climax, I felt like things could have woven a little closer together or taken a deeper darker plunge. Overall though, this was a wonderful debut with some heartbreaking stories in it, and my god! I cannot ever look at a bathtub the same lol. Can't wait to read more from this author.

This book will be included in a reading vlog on my booktube channel, I'll update the link when I post it.

Yeah it was ok. I was hoping for a bit more but it was decent enough. Well written but a bit montonal.

I didn't connect with the story like I normally would but I did finish it and would recommend if you like literary fiction but I don't think I would recommend if you are just looking for horror.

A darkly atmospheric story of the legacy of the Korean war, this was an absorbing but elusive book, I have to admit. It didn't quite hold up to its billing as 'gothic horror' for me, but in its own way it held my attention.

Yewon works in a convenience store, and lives in the small village of her mother, who ritually washes the bones of the dead in her bathtub. Yewon also suffers from recurring dreams of a hotel, with lots of rooms and keys, so clearly there is something troubling her. Her family life is fractured, her brother is in the army and stationed on the border, and then there is a North Korean woman who asks Yewon for help in driving her to visit her brother in prison.

I'm not sure I quite grasped all of the threads, I have to be honest. I felt like something more was going to happen, so maybe I just felt a little confused. Certainly well--written, with lots going on beneath the surface, but it just didn't quite grip me enough. Probably 3.5 stars, but I can't quite round it up.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

(I received this book from the editor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

This is one of those (not so) rare occasions in which I find myself speechless after reading a novel, but I will try to make sense of my thoughts: The Invisible Hotel, by Yeji Y. Ham, is said to be part of the gothic tradition, but I feel like ‘gothic’ is not precise enough to convey the eeriness that, similar to a dense fog, swallows the reader in its words, thoughts and, above all, feelings.
There is something about the way the author writes that reminds me of watching something through a blurry filter; you kind of see what is going on, but you cannot be sure whether everything is real or your brain is completing the blank spots with something it already knows (or thinks it knows).
Thus, the pages come and go and the rooms of the hotel open widely, but for most of the time the blur is all that stays. Sadly.

"The Invisible Hotel" is a haunting and evocative work of literary horror that delves into the depths of trauma, memory, and the collective psyche of a nation.

This story is now scratched into my soul and its ghostly presence will linger on for a while. This book is billed as horror, and while things are quite horrific, the reader will not have the same tense sleep-with-the-lights-on energy while reading this book. The imagery presented in the pages is both haunting and sad, it takes generational trauma and manifests it into a physical presence. This is the story of Yewon. Yewon dreams of an abandoned hotel filled with closed doors, a deteriorating and destroyed interior and a pool straight out of a nightmare. In her waking life she is falling apart. The sudden death of her father, the closing of her workplace and the desire to move away from home leaves her adrift. Her brother is away for his mandatory military service and her sister is acting distant and closed off. Her mother spends all her days caring for the bones of their ancestors in the houses only bathtub. Every house has these bones that they care for as reminders of all that was lost. War is a many tentacled beast that refuses to let go of its prey and the entire peninsula of Korea is in its grasp. They fight as hard as they can to forget the duty of the bones but the threat of war looms constantly over their heads as north Korea is still partitioned off and frequently causes concern with missile launches. Through all this chaos in her life she continues to dream of the hotel… This is a very dark coming of age story that is complex, deep and littered with symbolism.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I feel as though marketing this as suspense or gothic fiction isn’t doing the story justice. I’d describe it as some sort of speculative historical fiction/ literary fiction. Even as someone who has almost no working knowledge of the Korean War - the emotional impact of this book still definitely landed. This book is a very nuanced and beautiful exploration of generational trauma.

If you are interested in any of these things - I think you’ll love this book. It is very much outside of what I usually read, and therefore I’m not sure that I was the ideal audience for this story.

What begins as an interesting premise quickly becomes boring and I found myself not caring about where it was going before I even reached the halfway mark.

This book is haunting. There is a level of creepy and eerie throughout the entirety of this novel that the author nailed perfectly. That being said I felt the story itself left something to be desired.

This novel was vey haunting.

The bones is a metaphor - in a way - to the loss of those who were close to us, and the rebirth of a new life. This story takes you to the lows of war and he affects it has on those living in it. Our main character goes through a lot of inner turmoil and is trying to discover herself within her family and her home town.

The author does a fantastic job at distinguishing between reality and the hotel. I get chills reading about it and what it all means.

Overall, a great novel, there are a few parts here and there that could just more explanation, but that does not deter from the story.

In this claustrophobic novel it's not a "ghost" ghost haunting Yewon, but the ghost of a country ripped apart by war. This novel's blurbs call it gothic horror - I wouldn't put it in this category. It's war history, it's family trauma, bleak, with a sliver of hope.

Yewon is a young woman in a tiny village in South Korea, a village pillaged by war, a war the elders seem to relive every day. The bones of the village ancestors live in Yewon's bathtub, her mother washes them, the women in the family give birth on them. The novel was abstract and terrifying, with Yewon going in and out of her nightmare of being in the hotel. I couldn't tell if the bones were real or a metaphor. The abrupt changes and odd settings made this one hard to follow and disorienting,

My thanks to NetGalley and Zando Projects for the ARC.

I think the marketing was a little off the mark on this one; the genre is listed as horror, but I think that will confuse people's expectations. There's a lot of stuff that is very horrific - it's a book about war, family, and generational trauma at its core after all, but I don't think the storytelling style or writing or even plot are what anyone will expect when picking up a book marked as 'horror'.

That all said, I really enjoyed this. The writing is dreamlike and emotional, and the story is surreal if maybe a little slow. We follow a small main group of characters that consist of the immediate members of a family, with the main focus being on/from one of the daughters, Yewon. She's dealing with a lot, and is struggling emotionally with all of it. The anxieties and traumas and issues she's internalizing due to what's happening around her - things ranging from the recent death of her father to a precarious political climate - end up manifesting as a super creepy hotel in Yewon's dreams, and even in her waking hours.

I don't want to say too much more because I think the story is more impactful knowing less, but I would recommend this if you're open to 'horror' that's written as an examination of grief and trauma moreso than in an effort to scare you or overwhelm you with blood & guts.

The affects of the Korean War and the separation of North and South is a deep undercurrent affecting cultural identity. Yeji Y Ham brilliantly explores this through her character Yewon. It is a tale of inherited and generational trauma and the long arm of war and it's subtle affects on the psyche of a nation through the lens of an individual.

Highly recommend.

Was really excited about the description of this book, but unfortunately hat to DNF :( Shouldn’t have been marketed as a horror in my opinion.

Unfortunately a DNF for me around 25%. Although the literary horror concept intrigued me, the writing style felt very sparse and cold. I was hoping to feel immersed and unsettled, but wasn’t getting there for me personally.