The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Paperback – Illustrated, 7 May 2019

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.wasPS 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.