While many of the usual trappings of a classic mystery are here—two violent deaths, an intrepid (if youthful) sleuth, and an eerie, menacing setting—Hotel Paradise is more distinctly a "coming of age" story than it is a true mystery novel. Throughout the book, twelve-year-old Emma is called upon to make a series of moral choices which hastens her necessary initiation into young adulthood. True, given her age, Emma is already precociously bright and frequently insightful; nonetheless, the reader needs to be aware that her pre-adolescent view of reality may, from time to time, be skewed and unreliable. For instance, she seems never to have traveled more than a hundred miles from LaPorte, resulting in a provinciality and naivete that often betray her. In order to come to terms with the mysterious death 222 Hotel Paradise of.....
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