The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

I was going to give this 4 stars for compulsiveness of reading, but had to deduct for a couple significant problems:

1.) the constant irritation of poor writing/editing (uncounted dangling participles, and dumb stuff like “Sutcliffe and Pettigrew laughing uproariously with a drink in their hand.” Really? They have a single drink in their somehow common hand? Or “He frowns, smiling a little,” or the occasional slips from present tense narration. Come on, guys.)

2.) Turton wants you to know that fat people are so totally gross, y'all. GROSS! Don't get him started on old people - yech! (And yes arguably these are prejudices of the narrator, that Turton presents as a growth experience for him when he appreciates the hosts' good points. But it's over the top.)

3.) no spoilers, but the utter failure of the framing story when subjected to the slightest analysis. It's very, very clear that Turton thought “wouldn't it be cool to write an Agatha Christie/Quantum Leap/Memento mashup?” and then struggled to come up with a justification for why Aiden is in that position. I can't even call it Fridge Logic because it bothered me even as I was reading - the minute you think about the supposed explanation of this setup, you hit a bunch of unanswered, “But why would he . . . ?” “HOW did they . . .?” “Wait, how does X indicate Y?” type questions.

THAT SAID, go ahead and read this with the expectation that it's a fun ride, it doesn't have a real satisfying meta-explanation, but Turton did a lot of amazing work weaving and keeping track of threads, crafting characters, and making you desperate to know what happens next.

I apparently read this book over the course of seven days, but in reality I read it in two long sittings and a final 30 minute stint. And right up until that last 15%, the last 30 minutes, this book was a five star read for me.

To begin with, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a mystery novel like none before it. Aiden Bishop lives the same day in eight different perspectives on repeat; challenged to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle so he may earn his freedom from the loop. I think the mystery was well crafted as it was difficult to figure clues out as you went and prevented me from “solving” the book before the end. In fact, I didn't come close to it. I'm not sure anyone would. The reveal of different perspectives, their limitations and strengths, and their unique relationship to the cast of characters was an incredible strong point for me in this novel and has me ready to add this book to my favourites of the year.

However, I found the last 15% to be a significant decrease in quality. The twist was unexpected and could have been good, but as it was relegated to such a small portion of the book it came across as a rushed decision. I thought it read like the author decided he wanted a twist and wrote it into the book in the forty minutes before submission. I personally feel if the twist had been introduced more gradually, the book would have been a strong five star read. I recommend this book to anyone who is bored with the thrillers and mysteries they've read recently, because this was a shock to the system and deeply addicting.

Agatha Christie murder mystery meets rashomon, with a touch of time-skipping and body-hopping. What's not to like ? Yet it did not do it for me. Nice concept but the pace felt slow and the plot twists over-engineered

DNF'd at 50%. I found the story confusing and it didn't hold my interest.

Bit boring for me,a lot of going around in circles,I know that was the point days on repeat in different bodies but had enough.

Groundhog Day meets Agatha Christie.

Man wordt ‘s ochtends verward wakker in het lichaam van een ander, en blijkt 24 uur te hebben om een moord die nog gepleegd moet worden, op te lossen. Gelukkig heeft hij er 8 dagen voor, en zal hij elke ochtend in een ander lichaam wakker worden...

Negentien jaar geleden is de zoon van een welgesteld echtpaar vermoord, en nu heeft het echtpaar precies dezelfde gasten als toen uitgenodigd voor een feestje in het inmiddels flink vervallen, uiteraard in-the-middle-of-nowhere, landhuis.

De hoofdpersonage blijkt niet alleen in deze kweeste te zijn, er lopen er nog een paar anderen rond die een poging doen de moordenaar te vinden, een vreemde gemaskerde man, plus is er een bijzonder moordlustige lakei. Vintage Agatha Christie is dat het minstens een paar keer opeens een hele andere kant op blijkt te gaan.

Zeer aangenaam vakantievoer.

I had previously only read positive reviews of this book so the narrator's fatphobia really caught me unawares. While he's in the body of the fourth host he spends a ridiculous amount of time describing the disgust he feels towards his host's body. Because I hadn't seen anyone on goodreads mention this, I googled other reviews of this book to ensure I wasn't being ridiculous and this review said it better than I could. I had no inclination to finish this book.

I first became aware of this book thanks to the extremely funny coincidence of two books named The Seven _ of Evelyn H_ coming out within the span of about a year . This book has nothing in common with Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo but the two will always be linked in my mind and in fact I don’t think I would have read either of them if the other didn’t exist (fun fact, in the UK this book is just called The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, the name was changed in America to avoid confusion with Evelyn Hugo. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Reid’s book about the writing of the memoirs of a Hollywood starlet although it did have its strong points. Fortunately for me I liked this one a lot more.

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle has an incredibly intriguing premise, which is good for any novel but is especially nice for a whodunnit. A man is given one task: find out who is going to kill Evelyn Hardcastle. To do so, he relives the same day eight times, each as a different person who is there on the night of her death. It’s an awesome idea, however it requires a very strong storyteller not only to write it, but to keep the plot stable at all. There are so many ways that a book like this could fail. It can get too convoluted. It can have plot holes. It can get too caught up in all its details. The fact that Turton tackled this concept with his first book is very impressive and I will say he succeeds as a storyteller throughout Evelyn Hardcastle’s 458 pages.

The most important thing that Turton succeeds at throughout Evelyn Hardcastle is making it a blast to read. Whodunnits are at their best when the author drops clues here and there about the central mystery, leading the reading experience to become a game of author vs. reader. I will say that I did not come close to unraveling most of the mysteries laid out in the book but I totally believe that a more astute reader who has more experience with whodunnits could have figured out most of this book’s puzzles.

This book does go off the rails a bit towards the end, when Turton tries to use it to explore deeper concepts that don’t fit all that well here. I get the ideas that he is trying to raise, but this is not the book to talk about them. This book is sci-fi adjacent and sci-fi loves to use its premises to tackle questions about humanity but I think it’s at its worst when it leans too heavy into that angle.

All in all this is an amazing time and I would highly recommend it to any mystery fan.

The worst book I have read in a while. The concept was so so great but the writing dragged on forever and nothing was ultimately explained in a satisfactory manner. (HOW ARE THEY THERE??) The ending was so far fetched and boring and I kept waiting for the plot twist that didn't come.
Sadly this book that has been sitting on my shelf for years utterly disappointed.

This turns out to be a fairly complicated and layered body-hopping story wrapped up in a murder mystery, with some hints of the film Groundhog's Day sprinkled in. While the attempt to escape from the loop is the main driver/macguffin of the story, some of the fractured storytelling worked and some of it could confuse at times (and even slightly diminshed some of the reveals). The twists and surprises towards the end deliver for the most part, but expect some additional (supernatural?) elements at play that make this more of an off-kilter, rather than a straight-forward, thriller.

★ ★ ★
( maybe 3.5 )

Overall, I found this book to be like playing a game of Clue from every single characters POV except with half the amount of cards in your hand, and three times as many culprit cards in the envelope. And on top of that, your cheat sheet card keeps getting erased randomly. Exciting, confusing, frustrating. It simultaneously felt like it should be such a simple mystery to solve, yet I struggled more than I'd like to admit to connect any of the pieces. I don't read mystery, so it was a good genre switch up for me, however, it was overall just too slow and took me too long to finish. (Also this review is super long because I decided to write down my thoughts while reading it; so this is a culmination of that)

About halfway through the book, I was struggling to make sense of things, as well as keep going. The pace was almost too slow, and it just felt very repetitive. I know that's the premise of the book, but it still was starting to bore me. I also had felt that by this point, more things would be making sense, and I'd have connected more dots. I did have some working theories, though: 1) that Anna is actually at the center of it all—she's the murderer and/or creator of the game 2) the mom (Helena) isn't really as involved as we are supposed to think she is, that's a distraction 3) The cuts on both Bell and Gold were self sustained, and supposed to help remind them of something for the next iteration of the loop.

Now, three quarters of the way done, the pace has definitely begun to pick up. I'm not getting bored reading it, and am much more eager to turn the pages! I still honestly have no idea how this ends, and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be like that, or if I'm just slow to the punch.

This book also stirred up some rather philosophical questions within me. I'm writing this portion at the halfway point, so perhaps some of this will get answered in time. Here goes: How do we know who to trust? Where does that gut feeling come from? In situations where you don't know anyone, how can you decide who to trust and lean on? In Aidan's case, with no memory of his life or who he is, where does his confidence in his trust come from? More prominently, though, reading this really got me thinking about the bounds of personality and sense of self. When in a host body/mind, Aidan is constantly having to suppress his host's instincts and thoughts. When he fails to do so, he will act out in the same way the host would in that situation, rather than how he would. But other times he is able to suppress the host so much so that others notice the shift in personality and behavior. So, I wonder where one personality starts and one ends. And, with that, what aspects of personality are core to who you are, and which aspects are merely just there—perhaps as a byproduct of your core qualities. This also made me wonder how “aware” the hosts are while they are the host. Is the personality breaking through actually them being conscious of what is happening, and trying to control the situation? When they are no longer a host, will they remember that day? Anna mentioned that she could feel that she's been trapped there for decades, so is it the same case for those host people? Have they been stuck there for decades, being forced to play a part in this weird game? So when (or if) it is eventually over, what is left of them? Will they know it's been that long, or will it just feel like they pressed resume on their life?

On top of all this, there's the “time travel” groundhogs day aspect to this story that is also beginning to trip me up. On one hand it makes sense, but on the other, it really doesn't, and is seemingly paradoxical. The best example I can think of is with the note Bell reads at the stables. Bell is the day 1 host, so he knows nothing that is going on. He reads the note from Anna (plus a future version of himself as Dance), telling him to go to the graveyard at 10:20pm, make sure your gloves don't burn, etc. etc. Chronologically, this happens on day 1. Then, a couple of days later, when Aidan is Dance, we learn the origin of that letter, and how Anna/Dance wrote it and placed it there because they knew where Bell would be at that time. Dance also knows exactly what to write because he's already read the letter (as a past version of himself). So where did the original thought originate? If Dance decided to write something else, straying from the original note, what does that mean for the Bell of the past—the one from day 1, not the one existing on whatever day this is. Sure, the rest of the day could change (butterfly effect and whatnot), but it's basically the grandfather paradox, but almost in reverse. Although, I suppose this story isn't following the normal rules of spacetime, so everything that is going on isn't really time travel when it comes down to it, so these questions are futile and irrelevant.

I miss you Evelyn Hugo

https://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-248-the-7-1-2-deaths-of-evelyn-hardcastle/

This is a “time-loop” mystery with elements of romance. The main character wakes up with total amnesia and the memory of “Anna” being murdered. No one seems overly concerned as he goes through his day, has odd encounters with odd people, including someone dressed as a “plague doctor,” and reconstructs his life as a drug-pushing doctor.

And, then, he wakes up as someone else entirely.

Gradually, it emerges that he is living the same day as eight different people. The setting is Blackheath, an elegant but decaying English manor at which an indeterminate number of guests and servants are preparing for a party in honor of the return of the daughter of the lord and the lady of the manor. It seems like the temporal setting of the story was after World War I, but that isn't made clear. Some of the characters are unfamiliar with automobiles, which seems anachronistic.

We learn that the real name of the viewpoint character is Aiden Bishop and that he has been tasked with solving the mystery of “the murder which does not seem like a murder.” We also learn that there are other players to this game, namely, the “footman” who wants to kill Bishop's “hosts” and the mysterious Anna, who may be an ally or a competitor.

We follow Bishop as he tries to figure out what the mystery is. We then see his attempts to prevent the murder. Ultimately, late in the game, Bishop keys in on solving the mystery.

The mystery element was decent. There were clues that I could have used to anticipate the solution. I found it frustrating to follow the many characters who passed in and out of the story. If I had been a dedicated mystery reader, I would have started a list of names and drawn lines between the names to note their relationship, but I didn't have that kind of interest in the mystery.

The romance angle was weak. It seemed more stipulated than actual. We do see character development as personalities change, but why did they change so quickly. We learn that the characters have been playing this game for a long time, but the change in attitudes apparently happened in this loop, which seems without proper motivation.

The science fiction element is the weakest element of the story. We learn that the entire Blackheath scenario serves a penal purpose, but we are given no explanation about how it works. Was it time travel? Was it virtual reality? Hypnotism? There is no explanation. We are given no explanation about the world of the “present” from which the characters come. We get only enough information about the characters to make us sympathetic to them, well, two of them.

All in all, it was decent but not terrific reading experience.

This was a sensational read! So many characters, so many hidden sins, so much to unpack. I'll be spending a few days pondering over this story before I can pick up another...

It's like Clue but with Multiple Personality Disorder.

This book was.... interesting. I am glad I read it, but I am not sure if I would actively recommend it to others.

I think my main issue was that it went on too long for me personally. I felt like we could have done a heavy edit round and still not lot the essence of the story - in fact, I think we would have gained more from this. I kept getting confused and a little bored throughout the story. Not because the story was uninteresting, but because we had way too much detail, and I can only read the same scene so many times before it gets to be overkill. I think we could have experienced it with less detail each time and it would have kept my interest longer.

The other issue I have is that the women in the story are either described as meek, petite, and good to their men, OR they are super bad people. We did not get an intelligent neutral woman, and none of the hosts were women. I personally felt this took away from the story for me - and maybe this means I am not the right audience for the book.

Finally, I did not like the ending. Personal preference, but it wasn't for me.

NOW, there was plenty of things that were for me.

I liked the hosts and how he navigated the story with them - it was very interesting to see how your mind and physical state affect the outcome so much. I enjoyed the mystery aspect and felt that the plot was awesome. I liked the plague doctor as a character, and I enjoyed how the events unfolded.

Overall, it was a good book, it just went into too much unimportant detail for me, and I wish it ended differently.

I do have a few theories about the prison though - My favorite coming out of my book club discussion this past month. We thought it might represent purgatory - and now that they are 'out' they get to suffer through what comes next. We also considered it to be a simulation style prison, which was interesting!

Was slumping pretty hard and needed a change of genre and this book did the trick. A whodunit that's also a time loop story with another twist I won't spoil.

Book Club pick #10

This book has SO many things going on at once. And I think the author actually did an amazing job at keeping everything straight. But it's almost too much. I loved the beginning. I struggled in the middle because we kept getting so many new characters (and I wanted to go back to the ones I already knew and cared about), and by the end I couldn't keep track of everything to 100% understand the ending. And I took notes!!

A bit slow to start but once it picked up it was difficult to put down. The clues and connections were done nicely and the loose ends were all tied up as well as possibly could. It could have been simple whodunnit, but it went a step beyond and added a tasteful addition to spice it all up.

Time travel and the grandfather paradox are well-worn tropes, but it's rare for a story to gracefully handle this many overlapping timelines.

The ending was a bit of a let-down, but the ride was a lot of fun.

This was a slog to get through. The characters were okay, but they just didn't go anywhere.

i think i loved this book. i cannot be sure until a few days have passed, but my word: the writing! i thought i knew good writing until i read this book, and i'm absolutely astounded with stuart's quality. it was confusing, yes, with a ton of characters that i couldn't really describe because there are so many, but its entangled web reminds me of twin peaks, somehow, since this book doesn't really explain the supernatural element that gives it life, leaving some degree of fantasy to it.

not five stars because of the complexity you just can't grasp in a first reading, but re reading this will prove worth the time and elevate my overall opinion.

3,5/5⭐️
Dit boek duurde zooooo lang. Het had echt geen 500 blz hoeven duren. Ook dat we steeds heen en weer gingen tussen dagen was erg verwarrend. De plottwist had echt niemand aan zien kunnen komen en was dus een beetje jammer. De lengte en de onmogelijke plottwist zorgen voor een lagere rating dan dat ik hem eigenlijk had willen geven....

Most of this was quite good but the ending was such a let down.

Delightfully plays with time-worn concepts and devices, from the whodunnit structure and archetypes to bodyswaps and time travel (ish). Each aspect culminates into an amalgam of genres and ideas, one which is executed with such grace. While the intricate structure and plot can feel overwhelming at times, the puzzle is constructed so well that I don't particularly mind the occasional confusion. More to look forward to next time I read this, I suppose.

Intertwined with the mystery is a wonderfully executed theme of identity and memory, one executed through the protagonist's amnesia and the (utterly brilliant) concept of him inheriting the traits of the personas he inhabits. Areas like that are where Turton's writing really shines for me. Yes, the sheer audacity of the premise was worth the time for me, but there's some very clever and even profound ideas beyond the superficial fun of it.

A few passages are a bit rough, and some things don't quite work. But overall, this is one of the most creative novels I've read, blending an eclectic range of ideas into something cohesive and wholly unique. Highly recommended!

An interesting plot but a slow read. Has enough hooks to keep going but was tough to come back to it every few days. Also hard to keep track of so many characters.