Review – The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction/Time Travel/Historical Fantasy
Length: 355 pages
Publisher: Del Rey
Release Date: October 28, 2025
ASIN: B0DPYHD2V6
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eBook from NetGalley for Review
Rating: 4/5 stars
“London, 2015. When reclusive art appraiser Eve Shaw shakes the hand of a silver-haired gentleman in her office, the warmth of his palm sends a spark through her.
His name is Max Everly—curiously, the same name as Eve’s favorite composer, born one hundred sixteen years prior. And she has the sudden feeling that she’s held his hand before . . . but where, and when?
The White Octopus Hotel, 1935. In this belle époque building high in the snowy mountains, Eve and a young Max wander the winding halls, lost in time.
Each of them has been through the trenches—Eve through a family accident and Max on the battlefields of the Great War—but for an impossible moment, love and healing are just a room away . . . if only they have the courage to step through the door.”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got this on ebook from NetGalley to review.
Thoughts: I enjoyed this. I thought the beginning of the book and mystery behind The White Octopus Hotel was especially intriguing. As with many time travel books, things don’t quite add up and make sense, you just kind of have to go with the flow.
In 2015 Eve is visited by an old man who says he is a composer named Max Everly, a composer that Eve admires. However, Max Everly shouldn’t be alive. Then Eve starts to hear rumors of The White Octopus hotel, and she thinks she remembers visiting there herself. However, when she looks into it, the hotel has been closed since 1935. Eve decides to go and visit the ruins of The White Octopus Hotel and finds herself pulled into the past.
As I have mentioned many times, I am not a huge fan of time travel stories. No matter how well they are written, things never seem to quite add up, and so many questions are left unanswered. That is the case for this book. In addition to that, what starts out as a mystery ends up more as a love story set throughout non-linear time. It is decently done, and I liked Eve and Max well enough. However, the ending felt a bit contrived and unfinished to me. I had so many questions about the “why” and “how” of everything that happened. When you really start to think about it those answers end up being circular because this is about time travel.
I really loved the beginning of the book where Eve is tracking down information on the mysterious White Octopus hotel. Once Eve travels back in time to the hotel, things slow down quite a bit. Eve is participating in a hunt for clocks and octopus that she hopes will unravel both some mysteries from her past and some secrets about the hotel. During this hunt Eve is also having occasional encounters with Max. This is a situation where Max has spent time with Eve, but Even hasn’t spent time with Max yet because she meets him later in her timeline than he meets her in his. We also occasionally hear from Max’s POV as well and this gets into some events in WWI.
This was easy to read, and I enjoyed Eve and Max as characters. There are a lot of side characters here and they weren’t as well done. The bouncing back and forth in time never really gets confusing; it is clearly indicated on the chapter what time you are in. However, all this bouncing around does pull you out of the story, and then once you are starting to get into the time you are reading about, you are pulled back into another time.
This was well done but suffers from some of the flaws all time travel novels have. The ending doesn’t quite make sense if you think about it too hard; you are left feeling like a lot of your questions aren’t answered. When you try to think about the answers to them, you start to feel like you are chasing yourself in circles.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I really enjoyed the beginning of this book, the characters, and the odd White Octopus Hotel. I though the middle was a bit slow and the jumping between POVs and time (while not confusing) did pull me out of the story, leaving me feel less engaged than I would have liked. The ending left me with a lot of questions about the “how” and “why” of The White Octopus Hotel. There were a lot of other mysteries about the people within the hotel that were never answered. If I had realized that this was a time travel book, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up for review because that is a genre that I don’t really enjoy. If you are looking for a love story across timelines sort of story, this is decently done.
