The Book:
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Published September 18, 2018 by Sourcebooks Landmark
Date read: November 6, 2020
Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon
The Plot (from Goodreads):
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.
The Spoilers:
Alright, this is going to be very vague because I don’t think I remember or understood all of it. The gist was that Blackheath was a prison where prisoners had to solve a murder and prove they have changed in order to be freed. The murder takes place in the 1900s, but the outside world is some sort of autocratic future. Aiden isn’t actually a criminal, but came to Blackheath of his own volition to exact his revenge on Anna for killing his sister. Anna is basically Hitler in the outside world. Daniel is not Aiden’s last host, but is his rival and had only hired the footman.
Evelyn had killed Thomas and was betrothed to marry Ravencourt. Her parents hated her for not keeping an eye on Thomas the day he died. Evelyn and her brother Michael planned to kill both parents and then fake Evelyn’s suicide to get her out of her engagement. Evelyn was posing as her handmaiden though, with her friend Felicity pretending to be her. Felicity killed Evelyn.
The Review:
Holy crap, I cannot imagine the amount of work that went into this book. It’s not often that an author ties up every loose end I can think of, but Stuart Turton did an amazing job of bringing this all together in the end. I have no idea how he kept track of it all.
That said, as the reader, I did have a hard time keeping track of it all. I think the main problem was that I listened to this one as an audiobook, and without being able to flip back and forth it was almost impossible to remember who was who. I hope to re-read this sometime soon as a physical book so that I can fully enjoy it.
It was long and a little convoluted, but once I got a hang of the plot and the characters I really enjoyed it. It is certainly worth it to muddle through the confusion because it is all explained and tied up in the end (although a second reading would definitely do it even more justice).
I also think this would make a really great TV show!
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