BOOK TOUR STOP x RANDOM THINGS TOURS; Upstairs at the Beresford by Will Carver

Hotel Beresford is a grand, old building, just outside the city. And any soul is welcome.

Danielle Ortega works nights, singing at whatever dive bar will offer her a gig. She gets by, keeping to herself. Sam Walker gambles and drinks, and can't keep his hands to himself. Now he's tied up in a shoe closet with a dent in his head that matches Danielle's broken ashtray.

The man in 731 has been dead for two days and his dog has not stopped barking. Two doors down, the couple who always smokes on the window ledge will mysteriously fall.

Upstairs, in the penthouse, Mr Balliol sees it all. He can peer into every crevice of every floor of the hotel from his screen-filled suite. He witnesses humanity and inhumanity in all its loneliness, passion and desperation in equal measure. All the ingredients he needs to make a deal.

When Danielle returns home one night to find Sam gone, a series of sinister events begins to unfold. But strange things often occur at Hotel Beresford, and many are only a distraction to hide something much, much darker...

“Selling your soul is not easy. It shouldn’t be. The decision to do so is too important.”

 The Prequel to the cult bestseller, The Beresford is here and it is just as much of a fever dream. Taking us back to that damned hotel and the lost souls within for another journey into the darkness and depravity, meeting the Beresford again felt like meeting a familiar stranger - the building itself not only offers us a masterfully immersive setting but it almost acts as a character with its own mind.

There’s a strange air of melancholy and isolation from the first page - everyone is suspicious, everyone could be a villain or victim depending on where you’re standing. The writing style is quintessential Will Carver - irreverent, dramatic storytelling with a dry and darkly comic voice and quick, short chapters that keep an intensely fast pace. Taking an amazing locked-room thriller and bringing in the strange and occult, everything is dark and gritty, but cinematic and utterly hypnotic.

Each character brings their own unique story and strange dilemma for us; making us face morality and mortality and look right into the depths of humanity and inhumanity from the innocently troubled to the despicably evil - with the enigmatic Mr Balliol and his ever-present, watching eye that made me want to sweep my own home for cameras. We watch the debauchery, the impulsive, the reckless as We jump between different views, but with a distant third person narration all the way through that shows us exactly what the want and nothing else in a terrifying intrusive and voyeuristic way.

This is the literary equivalent of getting slapped in the face with an MC Escher painting; so check in to the Beresford - but be warned, not everyone leaves the same way, if they leave at all.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours and Karen at Orenda Books for inviting me to take part in this tour. I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for an honest review.