Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel by Elizabeth Everett 
Published by Ace on March 10, 2026
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 352
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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When a magical hotel appears smack-dab in the middle of the most unmagical of worlds, the last thing the residents expect is to fall in love.
Manager of the Number Five Wayside Inn and World Travel Hub, Pax Nomen has one of the easiest jobs in all the known universes, unless you count the occasional plumbing disaster. When Number Five Wayside gets stranded on a non-magical world, even Pax's trusty Wayside Handbook can’t help him. How is he going to “reboot” the hotel and keep it on its magical journey?
Josie LaChusia is a single mom experiencing debt, having parenting doubts, and tipping dangerously toward depression when an ad pops up on her phone that an apartment is available in a building she’s never seen before.
Pax needs a new guest to restart his hotel, and Josie needs a nudge to restart her life. In a building occupied by faeries, gargoyles, and a gnome with a bad attitude, two souls from very different places come together to create a home like no other.
It had potential.
The Number 5 Wayside Hotel and Travel Hub is stuck on the magicless earth. The Wayside is usually a mode of transportation between dimensions and for some reason, it chose to break down on Earth, with no “gas” and no magic to help get it restarted. The guidebook they located has been no help in determining what was needed to get her going again.
Josie and her son, Amos, need a new place to stay and have answered the ad looking for tenants. The hotel looks a bit run down, but beggars and choosing as they say. The guests are surprised–and annoyed– that the Hotel is so welcoming to these outsiders, so much so that it works up some magic to change the apartment to be more appealing to Josie. The only one who isn’t annoyed by Josie and Amos is Pax, the Manager of the Wayside.
Pax is a former Paladin who is quite taken with this little family. The problem is that if the arrival of Josie and Amos helps reboot the Hotel, allowing them to return to their destinations, Pax will need to leave the humans behind when he now wants to do anything but.
This story started with such promise. As a fan of Ilona Andrew’s Innkeeper series, I was all in with the magical, almost sentient Hotel starting to change itself to accommodate Josie and Amos and seeing the rundown hotel polishing itself up. Little Amos is adorable, of course.
I guess the biggest problem is that Josie has significant confidence issues and even when she starts to believe in herself, two seconds with her mother-in-law bashes down the barriers that she is trying to build against her verbal attacks. Josie spends every moment second-guessing herself and that also reflects in the Hotel as it bounces back with Josie’s confidence and when Josie gets stressed, it loses the momentum.
The secondary characters, which are all the guests, spend plenty of time on page but don’t get more character development than just their basic outline. The fairies act like cheerleaders. The gnome is grumpy. And the vampire does nothing more than look smoldering and want to make a blood-sacrifice of Josie and Amos.
In the end there were many unanswered questions, such as what is “sleeping” on the sixth floor? Is this just the beginning of a series or was did the author just not bother with answers, just using the sixth floor as a danger to Josie and Amos?
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