I tried, I really tried to understand The 7 ½ Deaths of
Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton,
but I just don’t get it.
The concept behind this book – murder mystery meets
Groundhog Day – is certainly inventive but I thought the execution was overly
completed and convoluted.
There’s a big party at Blackheath mansion. The party is
hosted by the Hardcastle family. But this party will end in murder. Evelyn
Hardcastle will die at 11 p.m. It’s up to Aiden Bishop not to stop her murder
but to solve her murder. He has eight days and eight different hosts to work
with. Each day is the same, except each day he will wake up in a different
host. Their memories are a bit of a jumble for Aiden. He doesn’t know which
ones he can trust and which ones he can’t. Solving the murder will not come
easy, as there is a person or persons working to sabotage Aiden’s quest. Aiden
makes some allies, and is determined to not only solve the murder but to
prevent it.
That’s the book in a nutshell.
Numerous glowing newspaper articles and YouTube reviews
convinced me that this book was worth reading. So I bought it months and
finally finished reading it recently. The book reminded me of some Agatha
Christie books, Evil Under the Sun and Death on the Nile. Guests
are sequestered at a remote location, a murder happens, and it’s up to one
astute person to solve it. Only with this book, solving the murder involves
soooooooooooooooo much plotting it was hard to follow. Most of the time I take
notes on the books I read, but just so I can recall some details when it comes
time to write reviews. With The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle I felt
like I was studying for test I was bound to fail.
The story is not linear, which isn’t always a bad thing for
a book. With this story, when Aiden wakes up in a different host he’s not
waking up at the time of day every time. The day doesn’t automatically start
from the beginning when the host falls asleep. Aiden re-emerges inside his
hosts at random parts of the day. At times, there are long gaps between hosts
and the reader is left trying to remember what happened earlier. When
the mystery is finally solved, I was not impressed. The ending seemed to come
out of left field, and relied on a lot of things going right (which of course
they don’t).
The concept of this novel is great, but the end result, in
my opinion, fell flat.
Rating: Meh
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