REVIEW: SOS Hotel: Guaranteed a Supernaturally Safe Stay!, Book 1 (book) by Ariana Nash

This is the first volume in Nash's SOS Hotel series, which is urban fantasy that will eventually include a gay throuple. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In the world of this story, at some point in the past, supernatural beings of all sorts suddenly found themselves trapped in our world. In general, humans were not happy about this, because a lot of those supernatural beings were higher up on the food chain.

Adam Vex is a 100% normal human guy opening his new SOS Hotel, which is intended to be a sanctuary for supernatural beings. Opening day is having...issues. Tom Collins, the magical AI bartender Adam purchased from a fairy, swears more than Adam would like and won't listen to orders. Zodiac, aka Zee, Adam's ex-porn-star demon business partner, keeps trying to work sex into the hotel's marketing plan, despite Adam's insistence that they're not that kind of business. There are a bunch of human protesters stationed outside the hotel...and one dead protester inside the hotel. Which shouldn't be possible, considering that wards that are supposed to prevent violence anywhere on the grounds. Add in Adam's business nemesis, Gideon Cain, and a sexy billionaire vampire who, for some reason, wants to be the hotel's first customer, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

I came across this while wishing I had more episodes for Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss to binge. Although I really enjoyed this, I wish it felt more like its own thing and less like Hazbin Hotel fanfic with the serial numbers filed off. I can't prove that's what it is, but I'm not the only reviewer who's noticed the similarities. There's the hotel setting itself, but also the characters. Zee is the most obvious one - he's physically different from Angel Dust and has a different relation to the hotel, but otherwise he's practically the same character. Tom Collins acts and talks a lot like Husk, Hazbin Hotel's bartender. Lord Victor Reynard is a looser interpretation of Alastor, but there was a bit in the text where he was described as having a voice made for radio, so the connection was pretty clear. Adam is either a stand-in for Charlie or (the more likely option, in my opinion) Lucifer. 

So yeah. I enjoyed Adam's almost manic efforts to hide everything that was messing up the hotel's opening day, and the flirting between him and Zee and him and Reynard was fun (at the moment, Zee and Reynard hate each other, but apparently that will change in the future?), but I never could shake the feeling that I was reading fanfic. Really good, fun fanfic, but still. The similarities were so intense that I looked up spoilers about what Adam really is (because he's definitely not human, no matter how much he insists otherwise). At least he's not an angel, fallen or otherwise.