From the publisher:
Trapped in a London hotel room with her lover, a woman must contend with her life and her marriage in this exhilarating debut.
https://amzn.to/3GXWTqP
“Room 706 is as tender as it is surprising, a gripping interrogation of womanhood—before and after marriage and children change our identities. I’m sure I won’t be the only one nodding my head throughout. I adored this brilliant novel.” —Sarah Jessica Parker, SJP Lit
When asked what matters to her the most, Kate would, of course, say her children and her husband. Because she loves her life. Even when it involves making a costume late into the night, scouring the supermarket for the only bread rolls her children will eat, and working during any spare moment in between. And she has found the way to hang onto her sanity in the process: Hours stolen away, once every few months, to have sex with another man.
Until one such rendezvous when Kate turns on the television to discover that the very London hotel they’re in has been taken under siege. And with that, she knows that nothing will ever be the same.
In the confines of a room with everything at stake, Kate is left to contemplate what has led her here, in hiding with a man who is not her husband while her beloved family waits at home. An exploration of marriage, identity, and desire, Room 706 traces the complicated story of one woman’s life as she faces what her future might hold—if she even makes it through the day.
Levenson’s debut novel is an introspective exploration of a seemingly ordinary life disrupted by crisis. Kate, a married mother of two, appears to have it all — a happy marriage, healthy children, and a job she enjoys. She also has a secret: Kate has a lover she has been meeting a few times a year for afternoon trysts, an escape from her everyday life. Then she finds herself in a morally complex situation: she is in a hotel room with her longtime lover when terrorists seize the hotel, trapping them together in room 706. What follows is more than a suspenseful hostage drama; it is a psychological portrait of a woman forced to confront the choices that brought her here. As death looms, the external siege becomes secondary to Kate’s internal reckoning, and her reflections are both unsettling and painfully honest. Thought-provoking and layered, this novel avoids easy moral judgments and embraces ambiguity, leading to an ending as unpredictable as it is unresolved.
VERDICT Book clubs will find plenty to discuss here. Recommend to readers who enjoy complex novels such as Life of Pi by Yann Martel or The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.
©Library Journal, 2026
1/2026 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
ROOM 706 by Ellie Levenson. SJP Lit (January 20, 2026). ISBN: 978-1638932321. 320p.
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