Review: Hotel Lucky Seven

Hotel Lucky Seven by Kōtarō Isaka
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Narrated by Pun Bandhu
Presented by RB Media

I liked this so much I finally bought the first book in the series haha.

Following on from Bullet Train, this sees our unlucky Ladybug delivering a painting to a hotel. Naturally, things go awry and dead bodies begin to accumulate.

The audio was an interesting treat, though I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I'd read it physically. The narrator did a decent job, but there are only so many ways you can change your voice to represent different characters, and so a lot started sounding the same. Particularly Pillow and Blanket - men doing female voices always sound a little too odd for me and these two were indistinguishable. I'd love the experience of creating my own ideas of each character in my head, so I'd love to re-read it with a physical copy.

There's also so much action that the details become important, and I'm not as good at absorbing details in audiobooks (usually because I'm multi-tasking). So as much as I really enjoyed listening to the story play out, I think there'd be even more enjoyment to be had slowing down and re-reading the sentences that get really hectic!

The story itself is the same kind of crazy/insane that Bullet Train was, which was thoroughly enjoyable. I really love this series with its unique characters and wild occurrences!

In terms of reading order, this does make several references to the events of Bullet Train which could be considered spoilers, so I'd read that before tackling this. But certainly if you enjoyed that one, this will be no different for you.

Highly recommend this series for people looking for a unique crime/thriller with comedic elements. I'm very much looking forward to going back to the beginning!

With thanks to NetGalley for an audio ARC

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