The people who brought you the hottest hotel guide book in recent years, Hip Hotels, will publish Hip Hotels France tomorrow: a thumping great set of French hotels to drool over. But unlike the original Hip Hotels, where minimalism ruled, the author Herbert Ypma seems to have padded out this book with a number of hotels dripping in ornate interiors, more French boudoir tart than Philippe Starck (just check out the miles of chintz at La Mirande, Avignon and - sin of sins - floral patterns at the Villa Gallici, Aix-en-Provence). Maybe France doesn't have enough hip hotels to make a truly French hip book? Having said that, design faves such as the Hotel le Corbusier, Marseilles, which is a living museum to Fifties architecture, and the Michel Bras in Laguiole, which looks like a mad scientist's lab, rip away all preconceptions of prissy French hotels.

• Published by Thames & Hudson £18.95.