Review: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle  

Author: Stuart Turton

Published: 8th February 2018

Publisher: Raven Books

Number of pages: 519

Format: eBook

Source: Bought

Purchase: Amazon, B&N, TBD

From Goodreads

"Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day . . . quite unlike anything I’ve ever read, and altogether triumphant.” - A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

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.

For fans of Claire North, and Kate Atkinson, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a breathlessly addictive mystery that follows one man's race against time to find a killer, with an astonishing time-turning twist that means nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

This inventive debut twists together a thriller of such unexpected creativity it will leave readers guessing until the very last page.

My Review

I have been waiting to read this book for months and I couldn't contain my excitement when I bought it, so that I started it quite immediately. The synopsis sounded brilliant: an unresolved murder, a man who is forced to relive the same day until he finds the murderer, which is also, his only chance at escaping the loop. But damn, none of the answers at the end of the book satisfied my expectations. 

Let's start from the beginning: we're thrown into a complex world and an even more complex crime, considering that our narrator, Aiden, has apparently lost all his memories. I found it brilliant that we gain consciousness progessively along with Aiden and I believe he was just the perfect narrator as the fact that he didn't have the vaguest idea about his pesonality, gave him an objectivity that helps the reader in getting to know all the devious characters that populate Blackheath Manor. The collection of portraits the author created is simply brilliant and it is indeniably imponent the work he must have put in creating such a solid concept. But from such a well-planned plot, I would have expected a lot more action, or better a type of action that revolved around the central crime. I wasn't expecting mysterious masked characters or other entities playing this loop along with Aiden! I was not ready to follow two separate stories! I simply thought that Evelyn's mystery was already a tough path to follow so the interference of the other enigma, was just too much for me. Overburdened with information, my mind just couldn't make sense of what was happening and started to get frustrated: I couldn't focus anymore and I reached a point where I skipped parts just to get to the bottom of the puzzle. But even when I did, there were things that didn't make sense! For instance, I understand that Aiden inherits the characteristics of those he inhabits, so the cleverer the person, the cleverer he gets, but it was not credible to make him switch from being clueless to being hyper aware. At some point, he started to make improbable connections and find answers as if they had always been there, giving me the impression of the author forcing the solution. In fact, if I were to analyse the hints and the hard earned discoveries we made along with Aiden, nothing would point to the answer I got for Evelyn's murder. I usually like unexpected ending, but this just felt a little above the clouds. And even worse, was the part regarding the reason why Aiden was stuck in this loop. As said earlier, I hated this intrusion to the central murder, but I would have accepted it if it then occupied some kind of role, but just as I had predicted, it had no part in this story. To me, it felt like something put there without reason and maybe, if it did not contaminate the whole story, I would have focused more on Evelyn's case, understood better its explanation and generally enjoyed the book more.

I'm giving this book 2.5 stars because I recognize how talented this author is and despite everything, I loved his writing style; I'm not excluding the possibility to read another book of his since there is certainly a genious mind behind all this work! Maybe next time, Turton!

Rated 2.5