The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Thank you to Sourcebooks for my free copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Goodreads Synopsis: Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11:00 p.m.
There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit.
We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer.
Understood? Then let’s begin…

Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop 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. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others…

The most inventive debut of the year twists together a mystery of such unexpected creativity it will leave readers guessing until the very last page.

Review: I actually took advantage of a promotion through audible and used a free credit to purchase the audio book. I listened to it at the beginning of December and quickly realized that it’s a book you really have to pay attention to. Especially with listening to the audio – there’s no zoning out for 15 minutes and then easily picking the story line back up like you can with some books. I actually did this towards the very beginning of the book and realized my mistake. I started the whole thing over and vowed to pay attention.

The story of Evelyn Hardcastle (not to be confused with Evelyn Hugo) is completely original and unlike anything else I’ve ever read. If I had to try and describe it, I would say it’s like a mix between Agatha Christie and maybe Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.

I won’t lie; this book was confusing in the beginning! (In case you didn’t already pick up on that when I said I had to start over after tuning some of it out.) Once I got into the flow and felt I had a decent understanding of what was going on, I discovered this story is nothing shy of brilliant. I can’t even imagine the thought process behind coming up with something like this.

The only way I can describe how I felt about the end is:

I’m glad that I own the audio book because I definitely want to do a reread soon. I think it’s one of those books that you could read over and over and still pick up on something new each time.

Genre: Mystery

Publisher: Sourcebooks

Publication Date: September 18, 2018

Page Count: 438

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

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