Maya Weisberg, the protagonist of Daniela Tully’s underwhelming Hotel on Shadow Lake, is on a quest to find out what happened to her grandmother. Martha Weisberg’s remains were found near a resort in upstate New York. This is strange because, as far as Maya knows, her grandmother would never travel outside of Germany and because the remains show that her grandmother was murdered. Maya travels to New York, twenty-some years after Martha went missing, to find out what happened and uncover her grandmother’s secrets.
This uncovering of secrets comes in the form of long sections of either flashback or Maya reading a letter. These chapters, at first, seem to have little bearing on the mystery at hand. Eventually, they do explain what happened to Martha and why. My problem was that these sections run longer than a chapter and just seem too long, which makes this book a clunky read. My other problem is that the one sex scene in the book is written in three or four cliché-ridden sentences that set my eyes to rolling. It is so nondescript that I’m really just assuming that two characters had sex.
Maya’s digging into the past reveals that her grandmother had a secret romance during World War II and how she came to die in another country, on another continent. I figured out what happened well before the end, so reading the rest of the book was a bit of a chore. I had high hopes when I requested this book on NetGalley. I really like stories about ordinary Germans during World War II, especially ones who become resisters. Unfortunately, it did not deliver. I think Hotel on Shadow Lake would have benefiting from a bit more editing to get rid of the clunky parts and weave the flashbacks, letters, and present sections more tightly together. And get rid of scenes that consist entirely of clichés.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.