Several summers ago, writer Rachel Syme hosted an online film club featuring a full syllabus of hotel movies. I’ll follow almost anything Rachel Syme writes, reviews, or hosts, but my ears especially perked up at the mention of the hotel setting. Of course, I love movies and all, but my mind immediately went to books.

As I considered, I realized I’d read and loved many books set in hotels. Since then have sought them out, whatever the genre—contemporary fiction, historical fiction, memoir, classics, even middle grade—because the setting appeals to the armchair wanderer in me.

Something about the glamour of a character who appears in a hotel lobby draws me in—what are they doing there? Are they alone? Are they running to something or away from something? But it’s not the setting alone. Hotels are where characters go to make memories, or become anonymous, or escape their lives. Either the character is checking in alone (intrigue!) or with relations they know well enough to share close quarters (a potential flash point for conflict!). And it’s usually for a short, defined period of time, unless it’s for the rest of your life, like one character on this list. All the ingredients for a great story.

10 books set in hotels

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A Room with a View

Author: E.M. Forster

I’ll admit I came to this book through the classic 1985 Merchant Ivory film, but I first discovered the film through the Gilmore Girls episode "Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller." "South rooms, with a view and close together, instead of which she has given us North rooms without a view and a long way apart." So begins the trip for wealthy, buttoned-up Lucy, traveling with her overbearing cousin and chaperone Charlotte. They’re disappointed by their hotel rooms, but when two other gracious hotel guests offer to switch with them, it sets off a love story, and a complication for betrothed Lucy navigating young adulthood in the Edwardian era. This set off one of my other reading obsessions: novels about the Grand Tour. More info →

Beautiful Ruins: A Novel

Author: Jess Walter

I read this more than a decade ago, and it’s one of those rare books where I still think about the characters and wonder how they are. While Pat and Linda might be the ones I remember, for most readers that’s probably Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They’re on set at a lush Italian resort to film Cleopatra. We follow the lives of the actresses, musicians, and innkeepers from the coastline in Italy to Hollywood studios over the course of their intersecting lives. More info →

A Gentleman in Moscow

Author: Amor Towles

This might have the distinction of being the only novel on this book list set exclusively in a hotel. Well, save the first few pages where our gentleman, the Count Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel. The rest of the story takes place as he creates a life lived within the four walls of the luxurious and storied Metropol, even if he’s banished to the attic rooms. His circumstances don’t prevent him from building a life that makes room for a charming cast of friends, a meaningful purpose, and even a romance. More info →

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Author: Helene Hanff

I came to this second installment of Helene Hanff’s continuing true story, started in 84, Charing Cross Road, expecting her signature wit and voice to shine on the page, and to be joined by the friends she’s sure to pick up along the way. She didn’t disappoint, but what I didn’t expect was her hotel on Bloomsbury Street to be such a character. Helene is a confirmed introvert, so this home away from home becomes her respite in the midst of a busy, and long longed-for pilgrimage to London as a result of her famous correspondence. I won’t spoil it for you, but her last diary entry is the perfect description for the end of every vacation. More info →

Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy Book 1)

Author: Kevin Kwan

The hotel in this novel is really just the backdrop for the action. In fact, it’s a point of controversy when son Nicholas brings his girlfriend home to Singapore and doesn’t stay at the family home, but a hotel instead. But those dashed hopes are the least of their worries. What he hasn’t told his girlfriend is that he’s rich rich, and heir to the family fortune. While they’re there, he and Rachel have to navigate familial expectations, career prospects, and prior relationships as the golden boy turned black sheep. There’s messy family drama, but it’s gilded with jewels, couture, private planes, and personal chefs. More info →

Lovely War

Author: Julie Berry

In the middle of devastating World War II, a married couple meet in a hotel room in Manhattan. But this isn’t just any married couple—this is Greek goddess Aphrodite and her husband Hephaestus. Oh, and to complicate matters, her lover Ares shows up too. They weave a tale of jealousy and love and war, flashing back and forth between their own love story spilled out in that hotel room, along with flashbacks to lovers Hazel and James and Colette and Aubrey during World War I. This is one of those stories that you’re not quite sure how it works with all these pieces—Greek gods and goddesses, glitzy hotels and battlefields, music halls and hospital halls—but boy does it work. More info →

Front Desk

Author: Kelly Yang

This middle grade novel is on my TBR list for this summer. I love reading middle grade in the summer months because it gives me those school summer vacation vibes. This story is about a young girl whose family works in a motel: her parents clean rooms; she works the front desk. Her parents are keeping secrets from their boss about what goes on in the rooms, and she’s keeping secrets about her dreams. I’ve been told that despite the heavy themes of secrets and family expectations, this one goes down light and easy. More info →

The Hotel Nantucket

Author: Elin Hilderbrand

This is the quintessential hotel book, not only for the setting, but for the way it gives all the summer vacation vibes in true Elin Hilderbrand fashion. It almost functions like a Nantucket getaway guide to the scenic beaches, restaurants, shops, and goods. Along with the glossy setting, the characters are just as swanky swanning around the latest Gilded Age property to open up off Cape Cod: a new manager hoping to put a shine on her own career by catching the attention of the hottest new Instagram influencer who is visiting the property and can make or break their season. Oh, and there’s also a Roaring Twenties ghost (which is much more fun than spooky, I promise). More info →

Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

Author: Elyssa Friedland

This was my first Elyssa Friedland novel, but it won’t be my last. She writes these great ensemble casts that you fall in love with. This family drama combines two families, with all their interpersonal mess and secrets at a hotel in the Borscht Belt. The resort is past its heyday, and the family needs to decide what to do next—and of course everyone has a different opinion about what that should be. Friedland includes food, fashion, games, and fireworks so you feel like you’re summering along with the Goldmans and Weingolds. More info →

The Wedding People

Author: Alison Espach

I’m not sure how a book that starts out this sad can be this much fun, but it was. Phoebe arrives at a Newport hotel heartbroken and with a tragic plan that certainly does not involve being conscripted by a desperate bride into her wedding party. Phoebe upends her own life in the process, and more than a few of the guests’ lives in the best possible ways. More info →

Do you have any favorite books set in hotels? Please share in the comments.

P.S. Unconventional packing tips for your next trip, 15 books to take you on a vicarious vacation, and An Ode to the Lap Desk.

About the author

Ginger Horton is our Book Club Community Manager here at MMD. Her go-to genres are literary fiction and classics. You can find Ginger on Instagram at @gthorton or the MMD Book Club account @MMDBookClub.

13 comments

Linda Castrilli says:

June 3, 2026 at 9:59 am

The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty

Trisha says:

June 3, 2026 at 10:05 am

Well, it’s not just exactly a book but the movie tie in book….
The Best Exotic Marigolds Hotel… “it will be all right in the end, if it’s not all right, it’s not the end”

Rachel says:

June 3, 2026 at 10:13 am

I have to add The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater + Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia!

Natalie Hogue says:

June 3, 2026 at 10:23 am

All the Ways We Said Goodbye by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White. A historical novel which connects the Ritz Paris during WWII, WWII, and 1960.

Hilary says:

June 3, 2026 at 10:27 am

Greenglass House is set in an inn (close enough to a hotel for this , i think) at Christmas time and it is fantastic! It’s middle grade fiction, just FYI.

Julie Boyd says:

June 3, 2026 at 10:36 am

I have recently been reading Middle Grade Fiction, to help get me out of a reading slump. Two of my favorites have been, Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend and Greenglass House by Kate Milford & Jaime Zollar, illustrator.
While Nevermoor travels between several locations, the Hotel Deucalion is homebase for Morrigan and it is a delightful setting. It is staffed with whimsical and magical animate and inanimate characters. This is a series and I’ve completed 4 of the 5 books, so far.
Greenglass House by Kate Milford and Jaime Zollars, Illustrator is entirely set within the hotel’s walls. Here we have a mystery, with a duo of kids trying to find and figure out the clues to a murder. Also a series, I’m looking forward to reading my way through it soon.
As it turns out, this reader needs a little excellent Middle Grade to propel me out of a slump. What a joy to discover these “great but not dark, soul crushing” reads!

Diane says:

June 3, 2026 at 10:37 am

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (Man Booker Prize Winner)

If you haven’t read this one yet, put it on your TBR. Excellent.

Shannon says:

June 3, 2026 at 10:38 am

I’m thinking of Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (Booker Prize Winner) and The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel could fit on this list as well. Thanks for the great list!

Emily says:

June 3, 2026 at 10:40 am

One of my favorite books is The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman.

Megan Campbell says:

June 3, 2026 at 10:55 am

This is fun. Do you have a link to Rachel Syme’s online film club?

Lisa says:

June 3, 2026 at 11:08 am

What a great list! Two locked-room mysteries I’d suggest are “The Midnight Feast” by Lucy Foley and “The Unwedding” by Ally Condie.

Cyndi says:

June 3, 2026 at 11:15 am

There are so many great suggestions here! I’d add Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz.

Emily says:

June 3, 2026 at 11:16 am

I’ve read almost all of these! I guess books in hotels are one of my things. I think the hotel Nantucket is my favourite Elin Hilderbrand.