The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton

Description

How do you stop a murder that’s already happened?

The Hardcastle family is hosting a masquerade at their home, and their daughter Evelyn Hardcastle will die. She will die everyday until Aiden Bishop is able identify her killer and break the cycle.

But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up each day in a different  body as one of the guests. 

Aiden’s only escape is to solve Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder and conquer the shadows of an enemy he struggles to even comprehend. But nothing and no one are quite what they seem. 

Deeply atmospheric and ingeniously plotted, The 7 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a highly original debut that's an Agatha Christie mystery in a Groundhog Day Loop, with a bit of Quantum Leap to it.  Perfect for fans of Kate Atkinson and Claire North. 

Review

I was drawn to this book because I love Agatha Christie books, I love time travel books, and this seemed as if the two were going to be combined in a groundhog day kind of way.

I would say if you absolutely have to see black and white in a book and not a million shades in between, if you need a plot to be set in the here and now with no fantasy element, then this is NOT the book for you. I struggled at times to make sense of it all, but I just blindly read on, not understanding at times a word of what I was reading.

I think I was rewarded at various points in the book with a glimpse of what was happening and this led me to read on. At times I cared little about what was happening and had no ties to any of the characters, should I just stop reading? About two thirds of the way through I actually started to want to know again what was going on.

Then not far from the end some semblance of normality if you can call it that was revealed to the reader, a chance to actually play along to some degree. Just like Agatha Christie you are never going to be able to solve this whodunnit, because you don't have all the cards in the playing pack and what's more you don't even know which ones are missing. 

I can say now I have finished this book it is absolutely brilliant - I think it would be better as a film - as it is quite descriptive and a lot of that bogs down the reading of the plot. Reading the same story over and over again wasn't as dreary as I feared it would be as it is from a different perspective each time.

I'm giving this book 4 out of 5 stars as I think it could have been edited a little more and condensed. My thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy of the book.