Kicking off this book review series of my favorite book of the year so far, the 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, a murder mystery thriller by Stuart Turton.
The synopsis of the book is as follows:
Tonight, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed… again.
It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed.
But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot.
The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath…
The Good
This is one of those books that will always keep you curious, and it does so by piling up many questions to make the readers thirsty for answers. To start, each new day in the story automatically posts various questions. Who is this host? how is he contributing to the murder? What would happen if Aiden changed the behavior of this host?
The book makes the reader very invested in most of its characters for a couple reasons. One, the characters could possibly be Aiden’s future hosts. Two, some of these individuals have concealed identities like a man with a Plague Doctor mask who tells Aiden that he needs to solve the murder mystery to escape Blackheath.
An interesting touch the author made regarding to characters in the story is that making the hosts not all equally easy to control for Aiden. The personality of each of these individuals also occasionally clashed with Aiden’s will to do things to solve the murder.
There are also scenes that actually can put a chill down your spine.
The Bad but Understandable
Some of the characters felt very stereotypical. You have your rich and obese guy in nineteenth century England who you would imagine to be a bloated version of the Monopoly logo. You got your
One of the characters solved most of the mystery, although it does kind of make sense. It could make the other character’s work seem a bit insignificant. I will say no more to avoid spoilers.
The Bad
The story has many parts that the reader could get confused about. The massive list of characters and their relationships could prove to be confusing. The timeline also got confusing.
Because Aiden is living the same day seven times and some events that happened on Day 6 (that is, 6th day he lived this day over) for Aiden could impact Day 1 because they are all the same day and same things happen. Although, in the book, not all days pan out exactly the same, but Aiden on his earlier days with his earlier hosts has been a beneficiary of the actions of his later days and later hosts. The concept of time in Blackheath gets very confusing and even seemingly inconsistent.
The author provided a lot of twists at the end, some of which the readers may find superfluous. Personally I didn’t have too much of a problem with them although I did think the ending was probably the weaker part of the book.
The Ugly
There is a character who happened to be obese and the book’s portrayal of him has made some readers upset.
Personal Note
I rate the 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle a solid 5/5. Although it did get difficult to follow along at times and a lot of twists at the end may seem unnecessary to some readers, the pros greatly outweigh the cons. The pacing felt spot on and I was really engaged in this journey as my curiosity kept driving me to find out what happens next.
Fun story to end this review: There was a scene where the main character was being chased after to be murdered. When I was reading, my washing machine started shaking really violently. This was 11pm at night. Quite the proper way to read a thriller.