Review: Dorothy Parker Drank Here by Ellen Meister

Title: Dorothy Parker Drank Here
Author: Ellen Meister
Format: Ebook
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publish Date: February 24, 2015
Source: Publisher

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Heavenly peace? No, thank you. Dorothy Parker would rather wander the famous halls of the Algonquin Hotel, drink in hand, searching for someone, anyone, who will keep her company on this side of eternity.

After forty years she thinks she’s found the perfect candidate in Ted Shriver, a brilliant literary voice of the 1970s, silenced early in a promising career by a devastating plagiarism scandal. Now a prickly recluse, he hides away in the old hotel slowly dying of cancer, which he refuses to treat. If she can just convince him to sign the infamous guestbook of Percy Coates, Dorothy Parker might be able to persuade the jaded writer to spurn the white light with her. Ted, however, might be the only person living or dead who’s more stubborn than Parker, and he rejects her proposal outright.

When a young, ambitious TV producer, Norah Wolfe, enters the hotel in search of Ted Shriver, Parker sees another opportunity to get what she wants. Instead, she and Norah manage to uncover such startling secrets about Ted’s past that the future changes for all of them."

My Two Cents:

In "Dorothy Parker Drank Here," famous writer and wit, Dorothy Parker is a ghost haunting the famous Algonquin Hotel. The Algonquin Hotel played host to so many writers in the early 20th century and Parker is not ready to leave. Add a old reporter with a secret and a young ingenue who wants to figure out what is going on and you have all the makings for an original story. This is a little bit of a strange premise and I wasn't sure about reading the book initially by I was interested in seeing how the author channeled Parker's infamous split. In this case, my curiosity was paid off!

I thought that the author did a great job of channeling Dorothy Parker but I found that the story line itself was a little bit predictable. There are some twists and turns in the book but many of them I saw coming from a mile away. It was definitely interesting to think of Parker as a ghost and I thought the author did a good job of capturing what she would be like as a ghost. This is actually the second book in the series. While the story was not always my cup of tea, I would like to go back and read the first book. If nothing else the book definitely has a good premise.

Overall, the writing of the book was interesting. Dorothy Parker is definitely the star of the show here, which suited me just fine!