Book Review: The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Posted by Alka

Book Review The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Have you played a video game? What happens when your character dies? You start over, right? But what if not only starting over, you become another character of the same game? Quite interesting, no? This is how I felt while reading this book.

Though the person who had recommended this book mentioned it a light read, I did not find it so. It needs concentration in case you do not want to miss out on the mastery of author’s connecting dots between characters or you can simply mark passages in your Kindle book – the points you find relevant enough to cross reference. It will be especially intriguing for a reader who can remember the pages she read previously as a different character.

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (UK edition) or The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (US edition) is a whodunnit of different kind. And being a whodunnit, I am not giving any spoilers away. In fact, I had not even read the book blurb till I completed the book, of which I am sure, most readers refer to book blurb at least, if not its reviews. And this made it even more interesting for me, for with the way characters were written and no one was what it seemed, I felt even Aiden Bishop was a fictional character in this mumbo-jumbo. I started reading the book and felt exactly like the main protagonist waking up and on his way to discovering what is happening around. Though I felt the last few pages of the ending could be better, all-in-all it was a good bumpy murder mystery ride, which I completed yesterday night at 3 am (do not tell this to my hubby).

Time is running out, you have only eight days to solve a murder. Can you? Before Aiden does? Go go go, pick this book…

Keep watching my blog for more book reviews!

Book blurb:
The Rules of Blackheath

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…
***
Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop 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. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others…

The most inventive debut of the year twists together a mystery of such unexpected creativity it will leave readers guessing until the very last page.

About the author:
Stuart Turton lives in London with his amazing wife and daughter. He drinks lots of tea.

When Stuart left university, he went travelling for three months and stayed away for five years. Every time his parents asked when he’d be back, he told them next week, and meant it.

Having trained for no particular career, Stuart has dabbled in most of them. He stocked shelves in a Darwin bookshop, taught English in Shanghai, worked for a technology magazine in London, wrote travel articles in Dubai, and now he’s a freelance journalist. None of this was planned, he just kept getting lost on his way to other places.

Website: stuturton.wordpress.com
Twitter: @stu_turton

Rating: 9/10