The Haunted Hotel

The Haunted Hotel

Author: Vawn Cassidy

Rating: B+

Vibe:  Warm, funny, and completely charming—the kind of book you inhale in a weekend and then wish were longer.

Morgan Ashton-Drake has spent decades not thinking about the crumbling Yorkshire hotel he grew up in. He runs his stepfather's hotel empire back in the States, he's all work and no play, and he'd very much like to keep it that way. Then a suspicious death and a tabloid-ready scandal at the Ashton-Drake Manor House drag his name into the press and his body back across the Atlantic. Waiting for him is Ellis Sparks, a clumsy, relentlessly sunny receptionist who's been holding the place together with fairy lights and sheer optimism since he was sixteen—and who happens to consider the hotel's resident ghosts his family.

The manor is broke and in danger of closing. The ghosts are convinced Morgan is the only one who can save it, and being ghosts with a great deal of time on their hands, they decide the fastest way to make Morgan stay is to make him fall in love.

This is grumpy/sunshine done exactly right, and I say that as someone who'll read the trope until they pry it out of my cold hands. Ellis could easily have been unbearable, since the perpetually chipper ones usually are, but Cassidy gives him a spine. He's kind because he chooses to be, not because he's a doormat, and his optimism reads as a decision rather than a personality tic. Morgan's thaw is gradual and earned. And the banter between them absolutely crackles, the kind of dialogue you catch yourself reading aloud.

The real scene-stealers, though, are the dead. The ghosts get their own point of view—Bertie especially—and they're a riot, bickering and meddling and staging increasingly ridiculous matchmaking schemes with the commitment of a community theater troupe. Cassidy writes them as full characters rather than set dressing, which is why the hotel ends up feeling less like a haunted house and more like a very crowded, very loving home.

There's something quietly moving under all the fun, too. Morgan is a guarded, self-isolating gay man who's built an entire life out of not needing anyone, and the book's real arc is about him getting adopted—by Ellis, by the grandfather he's spent years avoiding, by a household of ghosts who simply refuse to take no for an answer. Found family is well-worn ground in queer fiction for good reason, and Cassidy's version stays warm without tipping into saccharine. Watching Morgan slowly stop bracing for the exit is the most satisfying thread in the whole thing.

If I'm reaching for something, it's only that I wanted more. Cassidy builds this world so lovingly that by the time the last pages arrived, I simply wasn't ready to leave it. I could have happily spent another fifty pages with the ghosts and their schemes, or lingered longer on the hotel inspector subplot, which has more comic mileage in it than the book quite gets around to spending. But that's less a complaint than a compliment in disguise. I didn't want the book to be deeper or more literary, because that's not what it's here to do. I just didn't want it to end.

None of that changed how I felt closing it. The Haunted Hotel is comfort reading at its coziest—funny, sweet, atmospheric, and genuinely hard to put down. It's the book equivalent of ducking into a slightly ramshackle inn on a rainy weekend and realizing you never want to check out. If you've read the Dead Serious books you'll recognize the manor from Danny and Tristan's murder-mystery weekend, but you don't need any of that backstory to enjoy this. You just need a soft spot for grumpy men, sunny disasters, and ghosts who care more about your love life than you do. Book two's already waiting, and Morgan's brother Warren is up next. I'll be checking back in.