Book Review / The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

 

 

Aiden Bishop knows the rules. Evelyn Hardcastle will die every day until he can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest at Blackheath Manor. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others. With a locked room mystery that Agatha Christie would envy, Stuart Turton unfurls a breakneck novel of intrigue and suspense.

For fans of Claire North, and Kate Atkinson, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a breathlessly addictive mystery that follows one man's race against time to find a killer, with an astonishing time-turning twist that means nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

Published:     1st October 2018
Publisher:  Raven Books
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone
Source:  Bought 

 

MY REVIEW

 

I can't tell you how much I have heard about this book and seen it literally everywhere!  I knew that I had to pick it up.  Even Goodreads says that it has over 200,000 ratings with a 3.88 average.  With all that in mind, I was definately intrigued.  I am always intrigued when I see high ratings like this, whether they are good or bad.  

Despite the fact that I have seen this everywhere, I had been avoiding reviews and spoilers, successfully which surprised me!  So, luckily, I went into this story pretty blind to what was going to happen.  I didn't really read the description on the back.  All I needed to know was that this character, Evelyn Hardcastle was going to die, seven times apparently!

There is a lot going on in this novel, with a lot of plot and a lot of characters.  This is not a book that you can read lightly or take down the beach or wherever that might be in the winter.  You need to concentrate and try and figure out the story at the same time as the main character who is jumping from host to host.  

At 505 pages long, it is not a short book but I am actually glad about that because I, honestly, I did not want the story to end.  I found this story a slow read also, because there is so many details, characters and plot it is almost impossible to speed ahead.  But this did not put me off reading the story, not one little bit.

There were two things that I loved the most about this story; the first being the bigger picture plot.  Obviously I can't tell you exactly what that is, because of spoilers, but let's just say that there's more to the story of Aiden than we lean for most of the book, until the very end.  The second part that I loved was the twists in the story.  There's a few and, to be honest, I wasn't expecting most of them.  There's a very big twist at the end that really surprised me!

Would highly recommend if you like being kept at the edge of your seat but do bear in mind that this is a long story written at a slow pace.