Hotel Portofino

By: J. P. O’Connell

Narrated by: Esther Wane

For fans of Downton Abbey and The Crown...welcome to Hotel Portofino, where romance, revelry, and intrigue await.

A heady historical drama about a British family who opens an upper-class hotel on the magical Italian Riviera during the Roaring Twenties.

Hotel Portofino has been open for only a few weeks, but already the problems are mounting for its owner Bella Ainsworth. Her high-class guests are demanding and hard to please. And she’s being targeted by a scheming and corrupt local politician, who threatens to drag her into the red-hot cauldron of Mussolini’s Italy.

To make matters worse, her marriage is in trouble, and her children are still struggling to recover from the repercussions of the Great War. All eyes are on the arrival of a potential love match for her son Lucian, but events don’t go to plan, which will have far-reaching consequences for the whole family.

Set in the breathtakingly beautiful Italian Riviera, Hotel Portofino is a story of personal awakening at a time of global upheaval and of the liberating influence of Italy’s enchanting culture, climate, and cuisine on British “innocents abroad”.

©2022 The Writers Room Ltd. (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Too many characters!

So many under developed characters and zero plot. Reader was chirpy and annoying. Was hard to discuss at book club.

Nice book to read in the summer

Downton Abbey style, English country-house, fiction set in Italy for a little twist. Although not as well written as Downton Abbey, it has all the things you would expect. Easy reading on a summer holiday. Also deals with race issues of the 1920s which is a twist.

So many characters

No theme or story line. Characters without a purpose within the story. It was difficult to keep up with who the characters were.

Amatuer

As a long-time Audible fan (twelve years and lots of extra credits spent), I don't often comment on the books that I read, no matter how lousy or how good they may be, but this one was just amateurish and very poorly written. The racism issue was handled as a stereotype and seemed to be totally unnecessary to the story. The "art" story was so convoluted it was terribly difficult to understand and it seemed to be dreamed up; it doesn't fit the rest of the book, nor do many of the other plots. I felt like the author must have given up or possibly died and the publishers went on and published the book with everything unfinished. In addition, 99% of the "bad guys" won, with no good endings. What a downer! I suggest you move this to the Plus catalog where it belongs.