One other thing: it does take place largely in a hotel, which is up in the clouds. There's no sign anywhere naming it Cloud Hotel, no management that could make that an official name. I don't think anyone even calls it that during the book. It's more of a tag, or a description, that an proper name.
I think Julian Hanshaw usually, or maybe just often, works with SFF elements in his stories - maybe he'd call them surreal or slipstream or some other term, but both this and his most recent book, Space Junk, feature elements outside of normal life - science fictional in that case, fantastic in this one. But he's made a half-dozen books I haven't seen yet, so I'll leave that as a "maybe" for now: a creator's work is often more complex and distinctive than it may seem from one or two books.
Cloud Hotel was Hanshaw's fifth book (I think; he did some collaborative works and a collection of short stories, so there could be arguments about how to count), published in 2018. It's set during a few scattered days in the spring of 1981, in and around a town in Hertfordshire, England. (For my fellow Americans: one of the Home Counties, immediately north of London.)
The main character is a boy, about twelve, who says his name is Remco - cutting off another name that he almost said, starting with "Jul." Again, he's not exactly the author, but we can assume his name is really Julian. He's riding bikes in the woods, with his friend Luc. We learn, in more detail later, that kids have gone missing in those woods regularly - not all the time, not lots and lots of them, but a steady stream of kids, one at a time over what seems to be many years, some of whom later reappear and some of whom don't. A blue light surrounds him while Luc is a short distance away, lifts him up - the traditional UFO abduction thing.
Remco finds himself in that hotel up in the sky. It's slightly shabby but fully appointed - arcade games that work, rooms for anyone living there, food that just appears, vending machines always fully stocked, a big library with mysterious books related to the people there, a pool, and more. He's met by the two other kids in that hotel at the moment - Philip and Emma.
It's one of those places where things happen certain ways, and the people just know it - or, perhaps, tell each other, as one enters and another leaves. There's a pay telephone in the lobby. It rings, and it rings for a specific person. They know, instinctively, who it is ringing for. When it rings for you, you answer the phone, have a short conversation with someone, and then go through the doors next to the phone, never to return.
The phone is ringing when Remco arrives. It's ringing for him. He refuses to answer it: he wants to stay. He just got there. He rips a piece of wallpaper off the wall - this is important somehow, maybe symbolically, but Hanshaw never explains it - falls to the floor, and seems to pass out.
He wakes up back in Hertfordshire, a day later. His grandfather, who may know or understand the Cloud Hotel better than most, or may just be a conspiracy theorist, finds him, and brings him back home.
Over the next couple of months, Remco travels repeatedly to Cloud Hotel - pretty much at will, I think. It seems like his body is still on the ground as well, though - as if, to observers, that he just falls asleep. Time may also not flow at the same rate in the two places. Philip gets a phone call and leaves, but Emma doesn't. Emma has been there a long time - the longest in memory.
And something is going wrong with Cloud Hotel, first slowly and then swiftly. It's probably because Remco refuses the phone call, or maybe that's just one element. But Remco is sure Emma's body is somewhere on the ground, and that he has to find and save her. He investigates the books in the library, both the ones with his name and Emma's, for clues. He's also diffident, avoiding answering questions from Emma and his parents and his friends and anyone else - as if he's not sure what he's doing, or why, or just that he doesn't want to or can't put it into words. The same way he doesn't give Emma his real name, I suppose.
Other things happen: life goes on in the regular world, and things decay and break up in the Cloud Hotel. Remco does go from just wanting to explore and spend time in the hotel to wanting to save Emma - realizing her body must be somewhere in those woods.
It all comes to a head in the end. Remco, finally, does what he has to do, and we have basically the happy ending we expected.
We still don't know what the Hotel is. We don't know what they hear on the phone, who or what speaks to them. Something greater than natural, clearly - but what?
Cloud Hotel is a book of mood and atmosphere. Hanshaw draws people in a quirky way, often blocky - Remco has huge black squares around his eyes, for example - making this a distinctive, specific world, one that does not look like what we expect to match the ways it doesn't work like we expect. It's resonant while still being distant, as if the message is coming from a long way away, garbled by static on the line or twisted by time.
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