My Review for Murder at the Ivy Hotel by Emily Hourican

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"To think of any one of them not there anymore was to think of a hole at the heart of a mosaic."

I really enjoyed this story. It sent me reeling back forty years to my days of reading the Famous Five and Secret Seven books by Enid Blyton. It had the same sort of cosy mystery feel for younger readers. 🥰📚

I loved that Meredith, Macy and Colin joined forces to try to solve the murder, with the assistance of a dotty old lady who also lives in the hotel. 🔍🏨

This is one of those stories where you want to be a kid, living alongside the kids and helping them solve mysteries. With secret passageways, corridors and lifts that guests aren't allowed in, it's exciting and fun, and a really cool way to introduce kids to reading and enjoying books on their own. ✨🔎

Thank you to Scholastic for the free copy of Murder at the Ivy Hotel by Emily Hourican. All thoughts are entirely my own. 📚💕

About the Book

Twelve-year-old Meredith and ten-year-old Macy feel like the luckiest girls around. The Ivy Hotel in Dublin is old, beautiful and beloved, with a tight-knit staff that feel like family, and they get to call it home. Meredith and Macy's mum is the General Manager, and their modest apartment is tucked away in a corner, but it has lots of perks.

The girls make friends with long-term residents - like Colin, the quiet little boy who plays piano, and Agatha, the eccentric older lady who stays in a plush suite with her dog, Milo. The girls love spying on fancy events, sneaky treats from the restaurant and knowing all the secret stairs and corridors that guests never see, where the staff move around invisibly, making sure everything runs like clockwork...

This is going to come in handy. Because within the cosy walls of the Ivy Hotel, there is also danger, intrigue and threat. Just as the hotel's new owners arrive, ready to sniff out any excuse to make cuts and fire staff, the girls are faced with their biggest task a murder to solve.



About Emily

Emily Hourican is a journalist and author. She has written features for the Sunday Independent for fifteen years, as well as Image magazine, Condé Nast Traveler and Woman and Home. She was also editor of The Dubliner Magazine.

Emily's first book, a memoir titled How To (Really) Be A Mother was published in 2013. She is also the author of novels The Privileged, White Villa, The Outsider and The Blamed, as well as two bestselling novels about the Guinness sisters: The Glorious Guinness Girls and The Guinness Girls: A Hint of Scandal. She lives in Dublin with her family.





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