Review: The Thousand Lights Hotel by Emylia Hall

What I thought:

I chose this book as I was going on holiday to Italy and like to take books with me that are set in the place I am visiting.

Sitting by her mum’s bedside just before she dies, Kit asks one last time about the father whose identity and name she never knew. Kit is stunned when her mum, Rosa, admits that he is not dead after all, but very much alive. After a period of mourning her mums passing, she tracks down the man she has believed dead for the last 30 years and sets off to the tiny Italian island of Elba to find him.

Emylia Hall’s descriptions of Italy (and its food) are sumptuous. Evocative passages about the landscape, flowers, fragrance, colours and taste of the food were mouthwatering. The Hotel that sits of a cliff edge with lush and blooming gardens, wit winding paths to the sea and candle-lit evenings: divine!

The Thousand Lights Hotel is a book about loss and betrayal and fear and hope. Kit has grown up in England with a mother who escaped Italy just before she was born and has always warned Kit to stay away from men and not to fall in love. She has an image of a man who should be held in contempt, and not the one who greets her at the hotel he owns and is loved by staff and guest alike. Valentino is a wonderful character who cares deeply about the people in his life, but there is a profound sense of something missing or lost in his life. When he and Kit finally meet and he is told who she is, it sets off a chain of events that unravel the past in a way that neither of them were expecting.

While I did really enjoy this book, I didn’t love it. For some reason, despite the beautiful prose and heavenly setting, I felt somewhat detached from the book and its characters. I never felt that I got to know Kit properly. I appreciate that she was coming to terms with a major loss and uncertain of the future but even so, I didn’t ever really warm to her at all felt unconnected to her story. I think my main issue was that it was paced slowly and steadily, and dare I say, monotonously. If I’m really enjoying a book, I can’t wait to pick it up again, but with this book, I honestly had nothing pulling me back to it when it was set down.

Verdict:

An enjoyable but slow read for me. Not much pulling power in this book. Delicious prose and lip-smacking foody descriptions make an ideal escapism read but I wan’t blown away by it.