Lucy Checks In
Author: Dee Ernst
Pub Date: 16 Aug 2022
Lucy Checks In, written by Dee Ernst, a contemporary story with a splash of romance, might be the type of book, at first glance, that gives a reader Eat, Pray, Love vibes. And while the main character, Lucy, is a middle-aged woman in search of something to stabilize her and does that searching while in a foreign country, that’s where the similarities end. Lucy, after her hotelier boyfriend disappears with all the company’s money and has the Feds hot on his heels, is trying to put the shattered pieces of her life back together. Lucy was the general manager of the hotel, and her reputation, in the wake of the scandal, is in tatters. When she’s offered a job as the general manager of a small hotel in Rennes, France, Lucy practically jumps at the chance, and off she goes to try and mend her broken heart and reassemble her life. She leaves behind a dysfunctional family, whose problems continue to find her, even in France.
With a cast of odd-duck type characters–practically a hotel of misfits, really–Ernst gives readers a beautiful and heartwarming view of what it can be like to put one’s life back together. Lucy is stubborn, but there’s no way she is more so than Claudine, the owner of the hotel. In fact, though the hotel’s residents have all chipped in to help in whatever ways they can, none of them really think Claudine can possibly get the hotel up and running. It’s been closed down, after all, since the end of the war. With Lucy’s determination and gumption, because she most definitely has something to prove (to her family, to those who doubted her, and most obviously to herself), Claudine’s sheer force of will, and the rest of the hotel residents begrudging support, Lucy Checks In ends up being a truly wonderful story for anyone to read.
Fans of quirky, fun reads like Where’d You Go, Bernadette? and those who are pulled toward the warmth of the classic Little Women will enjoy Lucy Checks In.
An advance copy of this book was provided for review.