Although it's described as being The Great Gatsby meets Hellraiser, Below the Grand Hotel has me neither thrilled nor disappointed.

The comparisons are pretty accurate though which I'm pleased with. The Great Gatsby is one of my all-time favorite classic books and I felt like Cat Scully captured the essence of that story and flipped it into the horror that Hellraiser embodies.

Now, that being said why didn't I rate this higher? Although it starts off pretty straightforward with a goal for our FMC Mabel and her cohorts, it does seem to go off the rails a little. It suffers from too many locations. The Grand Hotel is supposed to be this labyrinth of unnatural proportions, but I felt that at times there was so much time spent on describing these elaborate rooms that you lose the point of the story.

I get the reason for having so many rooms to explore in the "below" portion. Using different "levels" to signify the decent into hellish bowels of the hotel is understandable, but by the time you get to this part its all sort of overdone.

As far as characters go, I had a hard time connecting with any of them unfortunately.

There are plot twists I saw coming and some that I didn't which was quite refreshing.

Overall, it's a fine story. I'm glad I read it and I'm super happy that it did live up to the comparisons.