The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

I love the negative reviews - they show how many people believe that solving crimes is as easy as depicted in the movies. This was FAR MORE like real life (with the body-hopping caveat) and explains why so many murders remain unsolved for decades. Solving a murder in only 8 days is pretty good going! 1. It is SUPERBLY written. 2. The story premise is magnificent. 3. The language is easily accessible- the vocabulary is quite low-brow/easily understood by most as there are few historical/technical terms used. 4. There really aren't that many characters... As can be seen in the product photos. If people struggle with around 20 characters, they're never going to make it through books like LoTR or, god-forbid, War & Peace! If you've ever read them, this is as easy to follow as Jack & Jill! 5. It's around 500 pages with an easy-to-read typeface - took me no more than about 9hrs to get through. 6. You won't know 'whodunnit' until the very end of the book. You'll get one part of it partially correct. But that will be all. I was SO excited by this! 7. If you like ACTUAL detective novels, and not the easy-to-guess Christie or Doyle nonsense books, and if you like early-1900s rich-people murders in remote country houses with too much booze and hunting and bad weather, with a bit of body-hopping thrown in, you'll LOVE this. Ignore the haters. It simply speaks to their inability to follow multiple threads and clues rather than a genuine flaw with this book. I don't have a verified purchase thing for this book as I was gifted it (and have further gifted it to someone else). If a label does eventually appear, it's because I've enjoyed this enough to buy copies for friends who are also able to follow the storyline ;-) Enjoy!

An enjoyable read, on the whole good but at some points I lost the thread & had to go back & reread bits. It was an interesting story line. Worth reading.

This is an old fashioned who-dun-it style crime story but with a fantasy twist. No year is mentioned but I feel it is set around 1900 – give or take a decade or two. Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered each evening for seven days. Aiden Bishop has the task of solving the crime from the perspective of eight guests at the celebratory party at Blackheath before he can leave the house. Each morning he wakes in the body of a different guest and re-lives the same day using the skills of the 'host' body to his advantage. Some host bodies seem, at first, to be of little use in solving the murder but each has something, even if it's only being in the right place or hearing the right conversation, to find who did it. This book is quite unique and requires a high level of concentration to remember what has already been learned and to keep up with new perspectives of repeated events. It's very well written and the author must have an amazingly well organised mind to create such a faultless and intricate plot as this one.

This book had a very strong start but I found I liked it less and less as it progressed. Beautifully written, albeit somewhat overwritten. There were too many characters which made it difficult to get attached to anyone. Also, the stakes didn’t feel high enough and I simply didn’t care enough about what happened to the characters in the end. It was an original story but could’ve been executed better.

I am a fan of country house murder mysteries but I found it tedious, incoherent, over-long and overwritten. It would have been impossible to follow the clues and guess the solution because it was all so complicated, with ideas and developments seemingly thrown in willy-nilly. I say "would have been impossible" rather than "was" because I got just under halfway through before abandoning it. I kept hoping it would get better and more coherent but it didn't. Fortunately I got it from the library so didn't have to pay for it.

Three words to describe this book: Downton Abbey-esque whodunnit. Each night the protagonist wakes up in a new body allowing different POVs to solve a murder in a decrepit mansion. I normally don't enjoy this genre, but this book was magnificently written with engaging twists and turns throughout. Stuart Turton does exceptionally well in delivering a very descriptive narrative which paints beautiful imagery in your mind’s eye feeling like the events are taking place around you. Ngl it does take some brain power to keep track of all the characters and events (and a little may have gone over my head oops 😅) but stills makes an enjoyable read. For me this was a fitting read for Halloween, while I was reading this book a spider actually scurried across my living room floor - quite chilling. 2.5 stars

I was only four chapters in when I decided to look up reviews of this book. I was finding it overwritten and tedious, totally at odds with the raves on the cover. I thank those reviewers who had the commitment to finish it and thereby saved me from wasted effort. was PS This is only the latest in a long list of lauded 'best sellers' (unintended alliteration) that is boring/derivative/badly written. How does this keep happening?

This is a truly badly written book, so the many rave reviews it has received are mystifying. I would defy anybody, except perhaps a programmed computer, to follow the plot and the characters are so lacking in individuality that I was still checking names until the end of the book. Much background description is wince-inducingly clumsy. There is a weird sci-fi device, whereby a character keeps being re-born into other characters that simply makes no sense, while the idea that this is some kind of detective story with 'Agatha Christie' style clues to follow, suggests blatant publishing misinformation. In fact, the only connection to Agatha is a banal ending that she was wont to use. The reviews told me to persevere, so I did, but what a waste of time! I can only think that the poor writing and bizarre plot produced a type of disorientation in many readers that they mistook for genuine mystery.

Le procédé d'écriture est un peu déroutant mais l'intrigue et les personnages sont intéressants. Toutefois ce livre aurait pu être plus court.

Beautiful writing style and a very complex story! It is a little slow to start and there are a lot of characters to try to keep straight, which adds to the complexity. That being said, I would definitely recommend this book and encourage reading to the end. The story is clever with lots of twists you could never predict! I found the ending to be quite satisfying and also enjoyed the underlying theme of you are who you choose to be. Be aware that because the story is somewhat complicated, this is not a casual read and would likely be best read in as few sittings as possible.

My friend recommended me this book. I enjoyed the reading, but the story is not for me. The story is somewhere in the middle of fiction and detective. I think I didn’t like the set per se.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is the most unusual mystery I have read. I have finished it for a first time, but shall soon go back for a second go-around to take in some of the very unusual aspects of the novel. The death referred to is viewed from the perspective of several people, each who contributes to or obfuscates the advancement of the eight days in which the plot develops. It is a fascinating and far from simple telling and will best be read by people who are willing to accept that the basic premise is certainly not at all basic as the novel develops. I am enjoying it greatly but it is not a straightforward read, and it is far more complex than an 'Agatha Christie' novel.

I really enjoyed this book and would recommend to fans of Agatha Christie or Josephine Tey. It was interesting and just the kind of light read I needed for a recent holiday. The chapters were short enough you could stop and go and not get too lost when picking it back up.