Murder at the Hotel Hopeless

Gr 6 Up–A comedic hi-lo cozy mystery. Seventeen-year-old Charlie Hope is tasked with keeping his mother’s struggling hotel afloat. This means he must serve at the beck and call of Penny Price, a 14-year-old chain-smoking child star who is on leave from her popular mystery show with a broken arm. When one of the tenants is found dead, Charlie and Penny must team up to solve the mystery of a cursed jewel. The length requirements of the hi-lo format do not serve this story well. Multiple important story beats occur off-screen or are rushed past. For example, Charlie reads the femme fatale character’s diary, which reveals her involvement with the crime, but readers receive a mere one-sentence summary from Charlie’s point of view. This story may also struggle to find an audience, since the smoking and age of the main character implies an older reader, but there is not the expected maturity of theme that older hi-lo readers gravitate toward.