Book Review: Checking Out of the Hotel Euthanasia

I’m finally back with another book review! Checking Out of the Hotel Euthanasia was sent to me a while ago but I finally got around to reading and finishing it. The fictional novel is a satire based around this luxury hotel that offers euthanasia/assisted suicide.

The novel took me a little bit to get in to but once the story started moving along I found the satirical story entertaining. The story jumps around to different characters and also jumps back and forth a bit in time. Essentially, you’re reading to find out how these different characters all end up at the Hotel Euthanasia, located in a small principality somewhere in Europe. There’s too many characters to name, so I’ll just name a few. The manager of the hotel, who means no harm, really does want to help people end their lives if that’s what they want. There is one part where a guest thinks they might want to change their mind and he says something along the lines of  – But you’ve already paid for the service, are you sure you want that money to go to waste –  and the guest is like oh yeah, that’s silly, let’s get on with it. Another character is Rab who is a young Scottish guy. He used to advocate for people to have the right to decide if they want to die or not and was part of the Communist party with his parents. But when his parents secretly went to the hotel and died, he left the party and joined the Catholic church and joins in a plot to try to destroy the hotel. A man who developed a motor-neurological disease and has been tricked in to going to the hotel by his wife and son because they want to move on with their lives and inherit his millions. They’re already suffering due to his medical bills taking away a few hundred thousand dollars of their inheritance!

There are a host of other characters, all with their own reasons for visiting the hotel and the satire is comical and entertaining.

Whether you are ready to just end your life or you’re suffering from a debilitating disease, The Hotel Euthanasia is there to assist you in the most luxurious way. You enter Departure Suites, when it’s your scheduled time, and it can be in any theme you want. It can be filled with a feast, the walls can give a virtual reality scene of a picnic in a garden, there are even erotic scenarios and prostitutes who are also social workers. How convenient! Once you are gone, workers (or your loved ones if they accompany you to see you off) will place you in a casket that you’ve picked out and you go on a conveyor belt to either be buried or cremated. Easy peasy!

Once I got in to the book (about 30-40 pages in) I was able to breeze through the book in no time. It’s interesting, funny, and if you like satire then it’s definitely worth a read!

*This book was sent to me complimentary, but all opinions are my own.*