Hotel Dare by Terry Blas, Claudia Aguirre

Hotel Dare by Terry Blas, Claudia Aguirre

My Rating: ★★★

I received a copy from BOOM! Studios through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When Olive, Darwin, and Charlotte are dropped off at their Mamá Lupe’s place, they are quickly put to work. Of course, cleaning the creepy old hotel their grandmother lives in is not how they expected to spend their summer. One day, Mamá Lupe tells them to continue cleaning while she’s out and gives them strict instructions not to go near her office. Ignoring her grandma, Charlotte picks the lock and explores the forbidden office with her reluctant siblings, and accidentally unlocks a magical world within the hotel.

This is such a cute and heartwarming story, but it could’ve been so much more. I think that it suffers from having too much going on at once. It has a great cast of characters, the storytelling is beautiful, the artwork is wonderful, and the story itself is great. That said, the story began to splinter down once the kids are separated into different worlds, or dimensions I guess, and it continues throughout the rest of the story as more and more gets tacked on. Unfortunately, this book reads more as a companion story to a book or series that doesn’t exist, especially because of how little we spend in two of the other worlds. It just seemed like we should’ve known these worlds already.

At its core, the story is about family, and we follow Olive, Darwin, and Charlotte, who are siblings through adoption. I love that Olive and Darwin have bonded and Darwin feels like a member of the family. However, Charlotte does not, and her feelings is what drives some of her actions, including pressuring her siblings into going into Mamá Lupe’s forbidden office. I loved watching their individual adventures, but I wish that the kids went into the different worlds together from the start. Because of how much they are separated, Charlotte finally feeling like a member of her family seems like an afterthought.

I loved the characters, but I loved Mamá Lupe the most. I would love to follow a series following her and her adventures as she searched for her husband across the different worlds. It appears to be a stand-alone story, but I will 100% be here if a book following Mamá Lupe were to come out.