I enjoyed this one! I found it a bit confusing in parts, but I was still compelled to keep reading. While I didn’t love it, the author is definitely skilled at creating an unusual plot, and weaving characters together. Requires a lot of concentration, but it’s a fun read!

“Somebody's going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won't appear to be a murder so the murderer won't be caught. Rectify that injustice and I'll show you the way out."

a;lskdfjlaksjdf;klajsdfkjlsdkfjkl;shjfklajsdfka = my brain after reading this book.

If I were a thing made alive by an electrical current, then this book would have made me short circuit. It's a lot to process. But so, so much fun.

I would first advise not to look too much into what this book is about, for the payoff of not knowing what's going on is very fulfilling. Stuart Turton does an excellent job at feeding his reader bits of information as the story goes on, making you scratch your head for a while until some things come together and you lose your mind at the revelations and then he flips it on its head AGAIN AND AGAIN. There's no slowing down with this one. It's full speed ahead. I found it increasingly hard to put this book down to go to sleep. On the night I finished it, I looked at my phone and realized it was 2:30am. I didn't even mind being tired the next morning. To me, that's the sign of a good book.

Several times, I paused my reading just to reflect on the fact that Turton was able to craft this story so seamlessly. It boggles my mind. Sure, it's a combination of ideas (It *really* is like if Agatha Christie wrote an episode of Black Mirror that encompasses elements of Clue, Groundhog Day, and Quantum Leap), but it's entirely unique all put together. It truly works thanks to Turton's thoughtfulness and attention to detail. There's so many layers and so much complexity, both of the plot and with the characters. I feel the need to go back and read this book again to see it with knowing eyes. Because he GOT ME GOOD the first go round. Talk about blindsided.

If you're a fan of weird books, books that blend various genres together (particularly fantasy and mystery), books that make you realize you haven't been so mind-blown since you read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, or books that make you feel like you've never in your life read anything quite like it, then pick this one up. It didn't disappoint me, and I hope you feel the same.

This may be Stuart Turton's debut novel, but he's an absolute devious mastermind, and I applaud this work wholeheartedly. I'm going to keep an eye out for Turton's next project. He immediately became an auto-buy author! The Seven 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle gets a 5/5 from me. Highly recommended!

“If this isn’t hell, the devil is surely taking notes."





TW: murder, violence, mentions of rape, fatphobia

This was complicated, sometimes hard to follow, and I honestly couldn’t tell you if it makes sense from a time-paradox standpoint (that always confuses me).

But I really enjoyed it. It was intricately plotted, hence the hard to follow, but it feels like it works. Beyond that, it’s a lot of fun trying to not only piece together the big whodunit, but how the day unfolds and follow the threads that come out of order. It feels like Agatha Christie meets Memento meets Groundhogs Day.

The only part that I was indifferent to was the how we ended up there in the first place but honestly, it seems like it’s included because there had to be an explanation. But there’s so many more interesting things going on that it’s not even something I let myself wonder about. It didn’t take up a whole lot of time so it doesn’t distract from the stuff that’s really at the center.

This was such an incredible concept, and executed with an absolutely brilliant eye for detail and connection. I cannot even imagine how difficult it must have been to write and plot this interwoven tale of Aiden Bishop and his quest to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle. There are secrets and lies everywhere and no one is who they seem - including Bishop himself, who has no idea who he even is for much of the first third of the book, as he struggles to wake up each day in a different body with no idea why, where he is, or what he's supposed to be doing - other than staying alive. It's difficult to call those around him a supporting cast, since so many are iterations that Bell wakes up as, but regardless of how they're described, each and every person in this story is a tale unto him(or her-)self. The population at Blackheath is stunning in its complexity - almost as stunning as the mysterious setting itself. Blackheath's secrets are revealed with devastating slowness - in an absolutely spot-on display of the prowess of suspense-building... The Big Reveal took me utterly by surprise - as did many of the smaller mini-reveals along the way. That doesn't happen often. And while it was nowhere near where I thought things were going, and could easily have felt over-the-top or eye-rollingly odd, somehow it worked for me and felt satisfyingly plausible.

I couldn't put this one down. Turton has crafted a brilliant tale and demonstrated a master's eye - and ear - for storytelling. I do hope to see a lot more from him in future!

Aiden Bishop wakes up in someone else’s body in the middle of the forest, with no idea where, or in fact who, he is. What he does know is that Anna is in trouble and he has to help her.

Managing to find his way to Blackheath, a run-down mansion, Aiden discovers that there is going to be murder that night, a murder that won’t look like a murder, so the culprit will get away with it.

He is going to get 8 chances to solve this murder, reliving the day in 8 different bodies. If he succeeds he is freed from Blackheath and will regain his memories and body. But if he fails, he is doomed to go back to the beginning and start the 8 days over again, and again, and again.

But he’s not the only one trying to break free from Blackheath. There are two others there with him, and only one of them will be allowed to escape. So Aiden must try to solve the murders before they do, while also avoiding the violent footman who is trying to kill him, one host at a time.

This book. Oh my god, this book. I’m not entirely sure how to put into words how much I enjoyed this book.

As we all know I love a good whodunnit. But there’s so many of them around nowadays that it can be hard to get too excited about them. It can all get a bit samey. But let me tell you, you can get excited about this one.

The premise of The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is unique to this genre, while also fitting in quite easily. The best way I can think to describe it is a mash-up of Poirot and Cluedo with the gothic horror of Sleepy Hollow, all held together with the help of Groundhog Day. Now if that doesn’t intrigue you then I don’t know what will.

I love a book set in the 1920s. The glamorous atmosphere and over the top characters are fascinating to me. And the characters in this book don’t disappoint. They range from socialites to doctors, to maids, and stable boys and each of them has a unique voice, even if some of them are being inhabited by the same person. Each character that Aiden wakes up in still have their own personalities fighting through, so it’s interesting to see how they each react.

If I had to pick something bad about this book (and I’m only doing it for the sake of being a well-rounded reviewer) it’s that it does take a lot of effort to get through it. There are a lot of characters to keep up with, and you have to pay attention to every single thing that happens. Every step the characters take, every word they say, it’s all important. So don’t start reading until you’re ready for that kind of commitment.

In saying that, it’s worth every single second of that effort you have to put in. Seeing how everything intertwines together, how one thing affects another so seamlessly, is amazing. I can only imagine the copious amount of notes and planning Turton must have had when he was writing. He is obviously a fantastic writer because he’s able to write an extremely complex plot without making it so confusing that you get frustrated. At no point did I want to stop reading.

The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is such an original premise for a murder-mystery but doesn’t go so far as to give up any of the good things about the genre. You still get a good plot, clues dropped throughout, and a satisfying ending. There’s nothing about this book that would make me say don’t read it. So go read it!

Unique premise kept me reading but the ending felt a little out of the blue without enough foundation to support the 'reveal'.

Hmm, what to say? I did want to enjoy this book but unfortunately, because I read it over a period of eight days, it was just too confusing. I couldn't remember who some of the characters were and what they had done and it all got just a bit too much. I recognise that it is well written and if you have the time to read it all in one go, I am sure it would be amazing. However, I stuck with it to the end and did enjoy it to a degree, but I don't feel I got out of it what I could have done in a single reading.

This book slots neatly in to the period, time travel, stuck in hell, detective, thriller section of your bookshelf. Yes, there is a lot going on, if the reader doesn't know what is going on that is probably because the main character is struggling alongside you. However it is well worth taking a deep breath, and carrying on, slowly little glimpses of comprehension light the pages and the book delivers as a page turning thriller.

Stuart Turton has my full admiration for writing this book. The walls of his writing room must have been covered with layers and layers of post it notes and string. Even when I thought I had got a grip on the events at Blackheath the plot managed to take another twist, even in the last few pages.

A great read, probably best not read just before you fall asleep as if you can't remember everything that has gone on you will be mighty confused!

This book was a hell of a mystery and something I’ve never read before. It’s twisty and confusing and so tricky, I had to concentrate and work as hard as Aiden to find the real murderer. The writing is excellent and I have to give points to the author for coming up with such an idea. Kudos.

All in all a good book.

Was hard to follow all the characters in this book in addition to the 8 hosts that the narrator must go through.

Writing was very well done!

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book!

It was a thrilling read. The title and the blurb had me hooked from the beginning. But the first chapter was pretty confusing so I didn't continue reading. I'm glad I gave it a second try. Once you know your way around the book is unputdownable. There were times when I was confused as hell, but at the end all the puzzle pieces fit together.Hats off to the author 's imagination and the way how he connects all the dots. Even though the climax has some great twists, I felt something was missing. It reminded me of Agatha Christie novels. It is recommended to read the book in one sitting so that you don't forget all the clues left by the author. Eventhough the law of crime thrillers say that the person whom you least expect will be the killer, the twists surprised me

What the actual fudge was that? I don't even know how to review this book.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is definitely one of a kind. The Hardcastles are having a sweet party to celebrate their daughter's return from France. Instead, she's murdered in a time loop repetition until someone can solve her murder. The main character, Aiden Bishop, possesses eight different people to help solve the case. The suspects are many and the secrets literally cover the walls of Blackheath.
It feels like Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day. It's different and the plot is interesting, but confusing. The mystery of Evelyn's murder is only a piece of the larger puzzle and it's big and I find it confusing with such a big reveal.
The characters never seem to feel real, like stock characters in a play.
It's an OK book, but make sure you put on your thinking cap when you read it.

I really struggled with this book for all the wrong reasons. The language/writing is period set which isn't what I normally would read. I found it hard to keep focus as it was too intricate. I've picked this up and put it back down more than a handful of times. I am sure its an amazing story, the concept alone dragged me in. But I just couldn't get into it at all. I'm classing it as a DNF but ask that my review be ignored as I feel if it were not for the language issues and writing style this would have been a 5 star read.

This was probably the most confusing book I have read in a long time. One truly needs to pay attention to understand it, and I still did not quite get it. I never liked Groundhog Day, and people getting murdered, beat up and what not, is really not my cup of tea. Never the less, I plowed through to the end. I always wonder what inspires authors to write certain books, and this was one of them. I appreciated reading the Author's notes at the end of the book. He put so much effort and thought and really great writing into this story. I really didn't like the book, but I gave the author 4 stars because it was so well thought out and so well written. Thank you to Netgalley and Raven books for the perusal of this book.

One of the most original whodunit style stories I've ever read. The protagonist wakes up with no memory of who they are, running through a forest with the name Anna on their lips. That's how we get introduced to this story. We then spend the rest of the book cycling through 8 "hosts" that the protagonist goes in and out of, who are other characters in the tale, in a desperate bid to solve a murder that may not really be a murder, before the hosts run out and the cycle starts all over again. There's a bit of a revelation at the end that sets the whole story on its head and makes me want to know more about who these characters are, how the ended up there, how the whole thing works, and that is my only complaint about the book. We simply don't get a lot of answers in that regard, but all in all in was still well worth the read. It was truly a unique spin on a murder mystery, fast paced, and fun to read!

My brain hurts. This was one hell of a complicated book. Read the synopsis and thought this was right up my alley, but there was so much more going on. Honestly, I didn’t really care for it, and it was a struggle to push through and finish. Too jumpy. Too many moving parts. I think there is possibly a really great story in here, but it gets lost in the confusion.

This has to be one of the cleverest stories I've read in years. The story is a little slow to start, but once it takes off, it's OFF! Imagine you wake up in someone else's body and discover you are trapped into living the same day over for 8 days and in 8 different bodies until you can solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle. If you can't solve it in 8 days, you're doomed to live those 8 days over and over. The deft writing and imaginative, complicated plot make this a surefire hit with those who enjoy a little challenge with their mystery. Ultimately, the plot reminded me of Dante's Circles of Hell. Blackheath would be one of them.

It's scheduled for U.S. release in September 2018. Highly recommended.

Wow, this was really great. It's a really unique concept that is so well-executed. A man has to relive a day over and over again as he tries to solve a murder. This book really sucks you in, and it's so much more than your typical Agatha Christie murder mystery. Highly recommended.

Do you know how many books it’d taken me to finally use the word, unputdownable? I think I'm more thrilled to have finally said it than actually reading this book. What can I say, I'm a simple girl. The simple pleasures bring me the most joy.
But back to the task at hand because friends, let me tell you, this. Was. Unputdownable!

Hold on, let me gather my wits first, this book was very taxing on my brain.

So, you’re thinking ‘a high-concept crime fiction, how derivative,’ right? Well, you haven’t heard anything yet, have you? Yes, derivative it may indeed be, I mean, how many times have you probably heard or read, [said book] meets [said book] right? At this point, I'm not sure if I'm enticing or putting you off reading this.
But before you cast it aside, hear me out. You won't regret it.

“Every man is in a cage of his own making.”



Set in the early 1920s -although it reads like late-Victorian gothic at times, with its remote setting and disturbing atmosphere with a touch of the supernatural-, the book opens with a narrator running through a forest with no idea who or where he is, wearing someone else’s dinner jacket and, he soon realises, someone else’s body. He has no memory of how he came to be trapped inside this stranger.

Eventually, our lead learns that his name is Aiden Bishop, and he is here for a reason and oh, he also starts each day with no memories of the past. An eerie masked figure informs him that today, a murder will be committed – a murder that won’t seem like a murder and Aiden has eight chances to solve it. He is obliged to repeat the same day endlessly until he nails the murderer of the heiress of the title and thus breaks a grim cycle.
But each morning he’ll wake up in a different body, or “host” among the visitors to Blackheath House, each with their own distinct personality. He’ll remember his experiences in the previous hosts, but if he doesn’t give the masked figure the name of the killer by day eight, he’ll be returned to day one, memory wiped, and have to start all over again. As indeed he already has done, hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.

Did I forget to mention there are two other members of the party who are also hosts to foreign souls, tasked with unveiling the murderer? That’s right, and only one of the three can succeed and thereby be freed from the time loop. And, just to keep him on his toes, he is being sought by a knife-wielding psychopathic footman who targets each of the hosts in turn. In a nutshell, your run of the mill party from hell.

In all honesty, the above synopsis hardly does justice to the ingenuity of Turton’s intricate narrative and the mind-boggling complexity of the plot.
The tension kicks in on page one and barely lets up through the entire book. There is a twist on nearly every page that demands your full attention as there quite a few information to take in and people to remember. I highly recommend reading this with a few breaks in the middle as possible so as to keep every detail fresh in your head but you probably won't want to put it down anyway. Remember?Unputdownable?

Not only does Turton do a great job of transfixing the reader's attention immediately, he keeps the tension high throughout the entire book. The characters are actors in a play doing the same thing night after night and each person has a motive. Each person wears a mask and you do not know who’s who. Every little conversation has a significance, every detail or interaction is important.

Familiar tropes aside, in essence, it is a classic ‘who-done-it’, but written with a quirky originality and a fusion of genres, all mashed into one, Crime, Mystery, Psychological, Sci-fi, Adventure, Thriller, and a Detective novel, who’s no clue which way’s up or down. I also loved the writing style. So very much actually, which was sort of darkly comic and witty as the plot is dizzyingly complex.

So, why, if I loved it this much was it not 5 stars? Because my big mouth spoke too soon. Up until the last few pages I was all set to slap this baby up with the full rating, thinking, ‘This is incredible. I haven't read a book that I so easily gave 5 stars to since The Wall of Storms,’ you’ll know I’m coyly but not so cleverly trying to sway you to read that magnificent tome -you know, two birds, one stone and all-, but I see I hereby defeated that purpose by admitting so. Never mind, moving on...

Anyhow, all was rainbows and unicorns right until I reached the last 50 or so pages when I started to get a little frustrated with Aiden and some of the decisions he was making. I simply wanted to shake the saint out of him and make him see reason but that may be the cynical in me talking.

Furthermore, there’s a loss of emotional engagement, albeit on a small scale, on the reader’s part as several times, Turton likens his characters to “shadows cast upon the wall” and each morning victims are brought back to life, thereby making the act of murder here seem no more dreadful than going flicking on and off a light switch, however, if purely viewed as an intellectual thriller, the book is without faults.

My biggest issue was here in the climax. As dazzling as the finale was, and it was indeed that, with a series of last-minute twisty WTF revelations, I still felt…. somewhat underwhelmed by it all? I still don’t know what but something was missing and I wasn’t 100% satisfied. That too may be attributed to my being overly picky but… still.

I also would have preferred the nature of Blackheath to be left more ambiguous, a mystery that’d make my head spin long after closing the book but this particular shortcoming in no way hindered my overall enjoyment.

All in all, if you’re in need of an invigoratingly original and entertaining read that’ll tie your brain in knots, The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle might just be the answer.

There are times when you come across a book that is unique and something that you have never come across before and wow this is one of them. The Seven deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is one of the books is such a book that I will think of, for a very long time.
Aiden Bishop has woken up in a body not his own. He is at Blackheath, in the times of socialites and business men, with their maids and valets. He is in a time loop. Where he has 8 hosts bodies and is there to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle. If he doesn’t, he will live the rest of his days in this time loop, switching hosts, reliving the murder of Evelyn and anyone else that stands in their way.
I will be honest with you I didn’t read much of the burb when I requested this book on Netgalley but, I heard great things and I had to read it. I don’t usually go for mystery and whodunit books but I am glad I did. I am amazed how good this book is. As this book is not an easy read. As you have to keep up with which body Aiden is in. It’s like a really complex puzzle and also reminds me of Sherlock Holmes in a way. But that was also the beauty of it. It kept you gripped and you wanted to find out more. And its told in Aiden’s POV. So you get to feel for his character and you are on his side. This book is very cleverly written. I loved every minute of this book and if this is Stuart Turton debut novel. I can’t wait to see what else he has in store for his next book.
Thanks you Netgalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for a copy of this book.