Book Review: “The Paragon Hotel” by Lyndsay Faye

“The Paragon Hotel” by Lyndsay Faye (2019)

Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery

Page Length: 432 pages (hardcover edition)

Synopsis:

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 DuBois seem to be at the very center of this tangled web? (synopsis from Goodreads)

Review:

Set in the 1920s our story follows Alice “Nobody” James who is on the run from the Italian mob with nothing but a suitcase full of cash and the clothes on her back. She seeks solace in the Paragon Hotel (all-black hotel) after being helped by one of its residents Max. With all of the racial tensions in the city it is dangerous for her to be there and all her secrets from the past seem to follow her.

Alice is an reliable narrator and she can seem trustworthy, but she has many secrets to hide that come to light over the course of the story. She’s wary about giving out too much information about herself and likes to concoct stories to hide her truths. But she has a reason to be cautious as she is still in danger. She feels indebted to the hotel’s staff for helping her. Through flashbacks we learn and piece together snippets of her history and turbulent background she grew up in.

The Paragon Hotel itself seems like a hotel that is vibrant, bustling, and full of life. It was such an interesting setting as I haven’t read too many books where the world building is done around a hotel. There were so many different characters of workers and residents at the hotel. I enjoyed reading the interactions between the staff, with Alice, and some of the other main characters. I also loved that the deep secrets that lie within the hotel, it added to the intensity of the mystery. People are not as they seem and everyone has a history.

It’s an immersive reading experience all around and was pulled into the story from the very beginning. Sometimes I felt the pacing was slow then picked up, and it continued in this pattern for most of the book. This was an entertaining book from start to finish, even though I knew involved mobs, gangsters it was still way more violent than I anticipated.

Reading the story through Alice’s eyes and was one wild ride. The Paragon was interesting setting for the story and I’m intrigued to learn more about the places it was based on, If you like historical fiction, I think you should try this book.

*Trigger Warnings: Violence, Weapons, Racism

Final Verdict: