I finally got around to reading this book after it was recommended by a fellow bibliophile at my day job. We periodically share our recent reads & ratings & this book was mentioned but when I went to add it to my tbr, there it was already. Tehe. Funny how that happens so often, not on purpose truly, books just get added to my tbr & promptly lost to the vastness that is my to-be-read list. Anyway, because of extended time on my tbr this was another blind read! Just bought it, took it home (put it on my physical tbr shelf for another 6 months, oopsy) & read it. No reviews, no synopsis, just cover & pages. Enough rambling, let’s review.
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
- Category – Crime Mystery Thriller
- Length – 458 Pages
- Read Time – 1 Day
- GR Rating – 3.5 Stars
“Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11:00 p.m. There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit. We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer. Understood? Then let’s begin.”
That is the opener for the books back cover, I did not read that prior to starting the book & will admit I was a little confused for quite a few chapters. I’m embarrassed to say it took me several chapters to catch on to the fact that I, the reader, was in the pov of the person, Aiden Bishop, who was inhabiting the different characters involved each day. Somehow the universe conspired to have me read a handful of time manipulation books back to back, this one being a time loop story. We the readers jumping behind the eyes of another character every ‘new day’. Who is going to kill Evelyn Hardcastle? That’s the question & each day we’ll be brought a different point of view of the same day & the events leading up to the moment of the crime.
Blackheath, scene of the crime, home of the Hardcastle family is a gothic manor secluded in the countryside, our story taking place sometime in the early 1900’s, the day of a masquerade ball marking the anniversary of a murder. Weird party theme right?! I know! The vibe very much melancholic & eerie. Guests at this masquerade have secrets & secret hatreds. While the mystery that needs unraveling here is a very straight forward ‘who dun it’, the answer is tangled in a more intricate web of mystery that will slowly be revealed as the story progresses. We don’t know why Aiden Bishop is stuck in this mysterious time-loop, nor whom or what is keeping him there.
Who is Aiden Bishop & why is he tasked with finding Evelyn Hardcastle’s killer? How did he come to be inside this time-loop, repeating the same day again & again? Who or what is keeping him trapped?
There is a lot of story in this book, evident in part by the 450 plus pages. Packed with clandestine collaborations, covert clues & plenty of misdirection, this book kept me guessing through to the end. Personally I often have difficulty keeping track of multiple characters in books without a face to correlate to the name because I forget names the very second I hear or read them. This is not exclusive to books for me, I know and acknowledge it is not a failure of authors that I can’t keep track of multiple characters without writing down some notes & clues to remember them by but I’m also not a consistent note taker, which inevitably means confusion when reading. That said, I did like the pace in which the story develops, it didn’t feel rushed nor unnecessarily drawn out for the sake of volume.
Ultimately rated 3 & 1/2 stars, interesting read. As always happy reading & thank you for joining me for another review.
Hasta la próxima – V
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