This book had an interesting premise but became too drawn out for me and had a really unsatisfactory ending.

I did enjoy the story enough to keep going - and there were some interesting back stories, but an abrupt end with no real outcome made me wish I hadn’t bothered.

enjoyed reading this as it’s more about the things that happen between Kate & James while trapped in the room together, her realising what drew her towards an affair, the ideal versus the reality. It’s just from her perspective and I would have enjoyed a bit from his.
Don't be drawn in by the seige at the hotel, this isn't a thriller but more an anatomy of a life lived, deception, parenthood, married life etc. but id recommend reading it still

Room 706 was full of suspense and thought provoking scenarios.

Taking place in a hotel room we get to know Kate , who has been meeting her secret lover James for their regular hook up, when a terrorist group take over the hotel.

Forced to stay in their room, Kate has the opportunity to reflect on her life, and the choices she has made. Spending more time with James, has her questioning how little she actually knows of him and his life. Her husband Vic is at home with their two young children unaware of how his wife got tangled up in this terrifying situation. She reflects on their life together and the life they share.

This novel explores relationships, marriage and how the choices we make usually catch up with us in the end . I was expecting this to be a thriller but it was more of a character driven love story .

I found the ending a little disappointing but that could be as I’m not a fan of open endings I’m always eager to have all the ends tied up for me ! It was definitely not the story I was expecting but was well written and had me engaged right to the end.

This was such a surprising book. I was drawn in by the blurb on the book and requested it straight away. I was delighted when I received an advanced e.reader copy and my thanks go to the author, the publishers and, of course, to NetGalley.

I won’t précis the book too much, that’s been done for you already. Suffice to say that Kate is happily married but has a lover and while meeting her lover in a hotel, the hotel is taken over by terrorists and Kate and her lover James are advised by the police to stay in the room, make no noise, don’t run water etc.T

The book is told entirely from Kate’s point of view as she passes the time looking back on her life’s history, at various stages of her life, then flashing back to the present.

The storyline is wonderful and it’s certainly the first time I’ve read anything like this. I applaud Ellie Levenson, the author, for finding a unique idea for a book.

It was tense in parts, sad in parts, joyful in parts. I swung from totally understanding and condoning her affair to quite the opposite. At times I felt her husband was too good to be true, then at times I knew I’d find him suffocating.

I found myself imagining what I might do in the circumstances she found herself in. I loved the games invented by family members that helped her get through it and I’m definitely going to get my grandkids a bag of pick ’n’ mix next time I see them and we’re going to chart and rate the sweets - they will love it. I’m also going to get some extra strong mints to do the trial there too. Awesome ideas!

The book flowed beautifully, I never got bored with swapping timelines as I sometimes do. Ellie Levenson is a lovely writer, I liked her style of writing very much and look forward to reading more of her books.

I have only one complaint - I did not like the ending. That’s all I can say without spoiling it.

A really powerful novel dealing with very difficult and complex issues. Don't be drawn in by the seige at the hotel, this isn't a thriller but more an anatomy of a life lived, deception, parenthood, married life etc.

Really powerful and would recommend to all

Room 706 is a thrilling, suspenseful and well-written novel.

Most of this novel takes place in a hotel room. This creates a sense of claustrophobia which adds to the tension throughout and gives the main character time to reflect upon her life and the choices she has made. Kate is a complex and interesting character and the other characters - written from her perceived opinions as well as her thoughts and memories of them - are intriguing too.

I felt the ending was a little too abrupt and I would have liked to have known more about the siege. However, overall, Room 706 is a well-written, layered, gripping and reflective story that I would highly recommend.

Thanks to Headline Review and NetGalley for the ARC.

Kate has left her home and family to spend a couple of hours with her secret lover when a terrorist group take over their hotel. The hostage situation in a smart central London hotel creates an opportunity for Kate to reflect on her choices, her relationship with her husband Vic and to think about what and who really matter to her. I enjoyed this tense locked room story. Described as a thriller, there is almost no action at all, but in its place the silence, stillness and the sheer mundanity of a day locked in a hotel room with someone you realise you barely know, builds a sense of tension where any slight noise has you on the edge of your seat.

Well this was not the cosy hotel stay I expected...
One woman, one hotel room, one affair — and then, boom — the whole hotel is taken over by terrorists. Yep, that escalated quickly.

Room 706 is one of those books that sneaks up on you. You think it’s just about a woman cheating on her husband, but it ends up diving into all the complicated stuff: motherhood, identity, longing, and whether we ever really know ourselves (or anyone else, for that matter).

It’s part character study, part relationship drama, with a bit of WTF is going on here?! suspense. The writing is sharp and observant, and you’ll probably find yourself highlighting lines that hit a little too close to home.

Messy, human, and unexpectedly gripping.
(Also: probably don’t read it while in a hotel. Just saying.)

This was a really easy novel to read and I found myself very quickly interested in the main character, Kate. We meet her as she's in a hotel room after meeting with her lover, and is thinking about the rest of her day. But as she puts the TV news on she discovers that the hotel they are in has been taken over by terrorists - and they are in fact now hostages.

It's a good hook for a plot, but the really interesting stuff in the novel is the backstory. The book moves back and forth in time, showing us Kate at various points in her life, and we get to read about her relationship and marriage to Vic. Kate met Vic when she was at a low point, struggling to process the death of her mother. He was also vulnerable, having suffered a breakdown.

It's clear that Kate found in Vic a sense of safety and security, and possibly clung onto that. But it also seems that they have a genuinely positive and strong relationship, despite her affair. Some of what's going on is left up to the reader's interpretation, which I thought was a good thing as everyone can have their own take on it. But I do think that the author still gives a strong steer that Kate and Vic's relationship isn't just borne out of convenience. He's fantastic during the siege, for instance, sending supportive messages to Kate even as she wonders if he's realised why she's at the hotel in the first place.

My own take on it is that Kate loves Vic, couldn't really imagine life without him, but at the same time she may feel that she settled down at a relatively young age and is feeling a little deprived of excitement. There's a poignant part of the book where Vic's brother first meets Kate and warns her that if she's looking for 'excitement' she won't find it with Vic. He is someone who needs stability and calm, and is perfectly happy being settled down. I think Kate is the same, but as she's ten years younger and experiences the particular pressures of being a mother, she also craves some freedom at times too.

The novel, while beginning with the story of an affair, is actually quite a sweet love story focusing on Kate and Vic's relationship and I enjoyed reading it. Thanks to Netgalley for the access.

the ultimate don’t judge the book by its cover/its blurb bc i went in to this thinking it was going to be a quick easy thriller, filled with action and plot twists, and instead it was a quiet, mediative look at life, why you make the choices you do, what will you leave behind when you die. the lovely gentle unexpectedness of falling in love, beautiful descriptions of italy, paragraphs that made me sit and think so much about how i would react. really recommend and really appreciated the ending

The plot was layered and engaging, offering both emotional resonance and moments of lightness. I appreciated how the themes were handled with sensitivity and depth. The ending was especially satisfying and tied everything together well. Thank you to the writer, publisher, and NetGalley for allowing me to review this book.

Kate and her lover are trapped in their hotel room by a seige. Maybe they'll not get out alive. The story goes back to her meeting her husband, his family, her mother and friend and her children. Then back to this anonymous hotel room and a man she seems to barely know. It's actually a lovely book filled with love and mistakes and what ifs.

Kate loves her husband and children and is happy with her life- mostly. Every few months she meets her equally married lover, James, at a hotel for sex, which makes her feel exciting, desirable and wanted. It keeps her going through the more humdrum everyday as a wife and mother- until the hotel they have met in is captured by armed terrorists. Forced to hide in their room while the siege becomes headline news, not knowing whether they will be rescued or killed, Kate suddenly faces losing everything. The premise of the story is actually a bit misleading, in that I expected more of a thriller, but the siege is actually a device for Kate to realise how important her family are to her and to think about what she would want them to know if she were never to see them again. I found it a bit strange that this included fairly mundane things such as passing on the password for the supermarket shop and reminding her husband about costumes the kids needed for school. The book is more successful in telling the love story of Kate and her husband Vic, and of the losses and pain of their pasts which have affected their relationship with each other. When in mortal danger, she realizes that James is just an attractive stranger and that she could either die or her secret be revealed and possibly destroy her marriage, and this makes her look at life differently. A great scenario for a novel, that could have been even better if the author had made more of the tension and terror as well as the emotional fallout.

This wasn't what I was expecting. I'd taken a cursory read of the blurb, about a couple having an affair being trapped in a hotel under siege, and assumed it would be a thriller with the action focused on the terrorists and the couple involved. But in fact it's a love story, as Kate reflects on why she has cheated, how she met her husband and what she needs to do to put things right, assuming she makes it out alive.

Her lover, the clinical and cold James, isn't planning to tell his wife.

I must confess I missed the excitement of knowing what the siege was about, and how it was being dealt with. Levenson builds up the tension around being trapped in a room that has hardly anything useful in it. The couple find that beyond the obvious, they have nothing in common.

The unique nature of the story will probably make it a hot ticket, but I couldn't rise above disbelief that Kate had risked everything for someone so unlikeable. 3.5 stars.

A slow, thoughtful book that takes place over several timelines. Stuck in a hotel room Kate reflects on her marriage, the narrative returning through flashback to the main bullet points if her life.
I was expecting drama and tension (the thriller!) but was left feeling empty. The main characters feel shallow and lacking, in more ways than one. If the intention was to be thought provoking I also feels it falls short. And as for the ending... other reviewers have expressed anger or disappointment. I just don't care!
The premise, when explained in the acknowledgements at the end, is intriguing and is what made me want to read this book, but unfortunately it just did not connect with me or execute the idea in a way that I enjoyed.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

This was quite a different read to what I expected going by the blurb. A hostage drama suggests shoot outs, stand-offs, lots of noise and shouting, but instead there is an eeerie calm about the situation Kate finds herself in, trapped in a hotel bedroom with her lover, James. Despite her terror, it's a time for reflection and introspection for her, as she looks back over her life, recalling how she met her husband Vic, the birth of their children Lennie and Annie, and the trajectory of their happy marriage. She's unflinchingly honest about her reasons for having an affair, and as we learn more about her, about her loves and her losses, she becomes a deeply empathetic character, despite her flaws - the main one being cheating on a loving, kind and caring husband!
The tension and suspense in this story comes not just from wondering whether Kate (and James) will survive the terrorist attack on the hotel, but whether Vic will discover the truth about his wife's infidelity, and how he will react to it.
This is essentially the story of a marriage in all its mundane glory, but by putting her central character, Kate, in a dangerous situation, both mortally, and morally, the author gives the narrative the exciting hook it needs to engage and draw in the reader. It poses questions about who people really are - as Vic once wisely points out, everyone is the centre of their own world. Will Kate's world collapse because of her choices?
We can only wait with her, and wait and see.

Wow! This was a very tense addictive read, full of suspense and drama and I could not put it down - such a page turner. I read it in two days! Room 706 tells the story of Kate, married with two children. Kate is also having an affair with James. They always meet at a hotel.

They meet at Room 706 this time. Everything is very regimented to ensure that they are doing everything to conceal their affair, making sure all traces are washed away.

But then their hotel is under siege and they are locked in their Room 706 and all the questions emerge. They watch in horror as the news unravels on the television. They cannot leave the hotel but Kate has a husband, children and a life outside of the hotel room that she needs to get back to.

As the story unfolds, we are given an insight to everything that Kate feels, thinks and how she organises her and her families life because she does not know if she will get out alive? So many thoughts go through Kate's head. They may appear trivial, but each holds weight for Kate. Very poignant as Kate prepares for her family to have a life without her. She is the backbone of her family and she needs to ensure that they will survive and know most importantly know how much she loved them all.

The narrative is so clever, you are completely immersed in Kate’s way of thinking. It does definitely make you think and you understand exactly why Kate acts the way she does, given the circumstances.

The book alternates between three different timelines and this is done so brilliantly. We have when Kate and her husband first met and their lives together and we have how Kate and James met and then their siege situation at the hotel. I really enjoyed going back to the different times in their lives.

The ending was magnificent, the book was incredible and the writing was superb. This is definitely a book you need to read! An outstanding debut from Ellie Levenson.

Thank you very much to Headline Books for my advanced copy. This review is based on a NetGalley ARC provided in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion.

Thank you to Headline Review and NetGalley for the prepublication digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. It’s an interesting exploration of the impact of loss on people and how this subsequently affects their relationships. Also a look at the role/responsibilities of women as wife and mother, compared to that of men as husbands and fathers. The story looks at affairs, the reasons people have them, the way they negotiate them and then the possible outcomes if they’re discovered. I think the moving backwards and forwards between timelines in the main character Kate’s life works well and I was kept interested throughout the book. However I’m hugely disappointed how it ends, I actually said out loud to myself “that’s ridiculous”, when I turned the page and there was no more!
I’ve given 4* because it is simply but well written, quite suspenseful in places and I enjoyed the novel until the end, I’d find it difficult to recommend to others though.

A chilling ramble of a book. Locked room tension. Well written.
Ultimately a love story but not in the way you expect it to be.
Trapped in a hotel room with her occasional but long standing lover during a terrorist siege, Kate ruminates over her life, her loves and her losses.


Spoiler and trigger warning!!
***Triggers for loss, especially loss of a mother and close friend. Having lost my own mum recently it was quite an emotional read at times.
It’s an open ended book in the end with no resolution whatsoever, in the conflict or the relationships. But although Kate isn’t particularly likeable, it is a beautiful love story in many ways.

NO. YES. MAYBE.

Which one? The ending must make sense and it does. Sort of. I am counting on one word "clear" to make it the ending I want.

i was unsure about reading this book and giving a review. I thought it could be a bit pedestrian for my tastes. I like police procedurals and grisly psychological thrillers.

A suburban family of four, even if the wife is having an illicit affair was not likely to grab my interest. So how did it strangle me into reading it in one sitting?

Room 706 is the answer.

Sweaty sex over, Kate's turn for the shower. T. V. shows more terrorist attacks in London. Looks like the hotel Kate and James are in...