Hotel Magnifique
Emily J. Taylor's Hotel Magnifique is a YA fantasy set in a Belle Epoque inspired city called Durc, where the legendary Hotel Magnifique appears once every decade and accepts a small number of new staff before vanishing again. Jani is a seventeen year old girl from the dock slums who has taken charge of her younger sister Zosa since their mother died, and the two of them sign on as maids in the hopes of escaping a future in the silk factories. Once inside, Jani discovers that the hotel travels via magical doors to a different exotic destination every night, that the staff cannot leave once their contracts are signed, and that the maitre d', a ruthless figure called Alastair, controls them through enchanted suminaire pendants. Jani makes the acquaintance of Bel, a brooding doorman with secrets of his own, and the two of them work to free the bound staff before her sister suffers the same fate. Taylor blends Caraval glamour, Strange the Dreamer atmospherics, and a quietly indignant labor politics.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Hotel Magnifique
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Jani and her younger sister get a job inside the legendary Hotel Magnifique, a building that crosses to a different city every night. The longer Jani works there, the clearer it is that staff disappear too.
Yes. Hotel Magnifique is YA fantasy, suitable for readers 13 and up. There is no explicit content. The book leans into atmospheric, magical-hotel imagery in the tradition of Caraval and The Night Circus.
Hotel Magnifique was originally published as a standalone, though Emily J. Taylor has written a follow-up, Hotel Eternel, set in the same world.
Hotel Magnifique was written by Emily J. Taylor, published in 2022 by Penguin Young Readers Group.
Hotel Magnifique is 400 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Hotel Magnifique takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Hotel Magnifique is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.