giving up the ghost

Aubrey Spencer has an unusual hobby. She loves to go to abandoned buildings and take photos. As an architect, she knows how to tell if an area is safe or not, but mostly she is fascinated by the history of the place and wants to take photos that evoke its soul. She found the Hotel Seabrink by accident. It’s not on the internet. Only the locals know about it, so Aubrey didn’t expect to run into anyone there. But she did.

Dimitri Petroff is known for his YouTube channel Abandoned Guy, where he shows off abandoned buildings. He too is walking around the Hotel Seabrink, taking photos and making notes. He has a deal with Netflix to create a show based on his content, and he wants to feature the hotel before the renovation starts. They walk around together for a while, until the smell of smoke makes them wonder if the building is on fire. They leave to call the fire department, and end up spending the night together.

The next morning, Aubrey wakes up alone. But it’s when she learns what happened to Dimitri that she becomes concerned. Apparently, in the early hours, he had left her hotel room and ended up at the bottom of a cliff. The local authorities are quick to say it was self-inflicted, but Aubrey isn’t convinced. He had seen someone in the window at the Seabrink. and the local lore is that seeing the woman in the window meant that the person will be dead within 24 hours.

But Aubrey doesn’t believe in ghosts, and she learns that there are others in town who might be suspects. Another content producer, a man competitive with Dimitri, has also been seen in town as has her ex, who she has an order of protection against. But there are also many stories about the Hotel Seabrink, about other deaths there, and ghosts causing trouble.

Aubrey learns that the smoke they had smelled turned out to be a false alarm, and that it happened more often than she expected that the fire department was called out there to find nothing. The hotel had been bought by the wealthy salt miner T. Jefferson Goffin because the natural mineral water that is pumped throughout the hotel was said to have healing properties, and he was hoping it would heal his son. It didn’t, but early Hollywood stars came to take in the healing waters. But while it had once been the jewel of the coast, before that and since, the Hotel Seabrink had a lot of secrets. And Aubrey will need to find those secrets in order to figure out what happened to Dimitri, and to make sure she can get out alive.

Hotel Asylum is a fun thriller with secrets, history, and ghosts. There are a lot of those creepy moments I want from a good ghost story, and there are enough layers to the secrets that made it hard to figure out until the end. I loved these characters, and I couldn’t wait for them to put all the pieces together and find out what had happened at the Seabrink to leave it in its current condition. I thought the writing was beautiful, smooth and engrossing. This book reminded me of my all-time favorite ghost story, the Stephen King limited television series Rose Red, so I was all in from the beginning. I loved this ride, and couldn’t wait to race to the end.

Egalleys for Asylum Hotel were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.