I wanted more than anything to like this book, but I didn’t. I wasn’t a fan of the narrative and the formatting of the e-book makes it very difficult to follow. I initially thought that this just wasn’t bedtime reading but it turns out it just did not click with me.

Having said that, upon publication I will be on the hunt for a print copy in the hope that that will be a more enjoyable experience.

Seven Down is a different type of book,. I really liked the concept and was interested in how the author would write it in this way. The story is told through the transcripts of interviews after an event, which I thought was a really good idea. (It is a little bit like Daisy Jones and the Six in this way.) It felt like doing a jigsaw puzzle, as each person's small role was revealed and the overall picture of what happened and what went wrong began to emerge.
I do think that reading it on my Kindle via NetGalley may not have been the best idea - and I am interested to see how the book looks on paper. I kept thinking I was missing something - there looked to be pictures missing - this can sometimes happen when reading a draft.
I also think I may have been the wrong demographic for the book. I think it was probably written for a younger audience than me. I had the feeling that the author may be drawing on video games or something unknown to me for much of the story-line.
Having said that, there was defiantly something compelling about the book and I think it will do well.
Thank you to the author, the publisher and @NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review #SevenDown

Seven Down is a deep dive into an assassination attempt gone wrong. We follow seven different hotel employees as they speak to multiple mysterious interviewers, recounting their experience of the day and the circumstances that led them there - ultimately, we’re trying to figure out exactly what was supposed to happen, and how it went wrong. The book is written as transcripts from each individual’s interview, at multiple different times after the botched attempt.

I LOVED the way this story was told - at first, I’ll admit, it was difficult to get used to this new way of storytelling (new to me, at least). But after I adjusted, I found myself staying up late, telling myself “I just need to get to the end of this transcript!” It was so much fun to put together the different perspectives of all the characters involved in the operation, and also figure out WHY any of these characters would possibly get caught up in something like assassination.

My personal favourite transcripts were from Ramen and Ivy, but seeing other characters pop up in each other’s memory was like finding little nuggets of excitement in each story. There’s so much to be said here about memory, truth, and secret.

I'm so sad as I write this.
This book actually made me feel a little inferior as a reader! Highly intelligent and clever, and was formatted in just the style I like- police interviews. I love any book that is written in an unusual way- emails, texts etc.
Firstly, I was hooked immediately in the opening chapter, intrigued on the operation that the workers were involved in. But the characters annoyed me! They waffled, digressed, spoke irrelevant information and I found myself shouting 'get to the point, I want the good stuff!' and I found myself losing interest very quickly.
As other people have loved it, I think I was just not in the right concentration head space for this one.

An interesting concept, but it felt like a lot of the ideas weren’t expanded quite enough, and nothing quite tied together. A fun read though (and I was also an Echelon member, so it’s nice to know I have something in common with an anarchist!)

This was painful. The format didn’t work in the ebook I was sent. There was text garbled, spacing all weird amd the conversations didn’t flow well due to the formatting. Aside form that the story was just …messy. I had high hopes for this from the blurb but it was not a good read.

Seven Down reads very much like the book Anxious People, and I enjoyed reading each of the seven characters' rendition of the events of a failed assassination. Each character's personality comes through in the narrative, and as they tell their stories, the reader gets more information about what happened, and how it went horribly wrong.

I found the ending of the book a bit disappointing, and anticlimactic. Some characters also got sidetracked in telling their stories, which allows the reader to get to know them better, but for some the extraneous info may make the story drag somewhat.

Overall, if you enjoy a whodunit, with a unique style of writing told from multiple points of view, Seven Down is worth a read.

Thank you to Netgalley and Dundurn Press for the opportunity to read the eARC of Seven Down by David Whitton in exchange for an honest review.

Written entirely in transcripts from interviews with the sleeper agents, Seven Down is a clever novel.
As the reader you gain insights in to each agents personality and aspirations, why they are here now and in this assassination quest. It has a unique premise & is interestingly told as a twisty puzzle.
A book I would recommend.
My thanks go to the author, publisher and Netgalley in providing this arc in return for a honest review.

I was fascinated by the way the author narrates in a very smooth sequence of events issues that are not openly spoken -if you know what I mean if you do not, I will not specify- the fact that every character is created as an ordinary individual although capable of turning their life upside down just because they are not comfortable with a 1% of their life. This states to me, once more that human beings are capable of good and evil. "It just takes a second to make a bad decision or amended it."
This is my first time reading a book like this one, it is categorized as General Fiction, but for someone like me who only reads Rom-Com, Cozy mystery, or Romance Fantasy, this was an unexpected Thriller.
I am glad I was selected to read it.

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A puzzle thriller story, for those who enjoyed The Appeal or like quick paced but character rich novels. The story of the gigantic failure of an assassination attempt in a top tier hotel is pieced together by the reader through the debriefings of the sleeper agents. The voice of each agent is distinct, and most of them are very engaging. Recommend for a novel read, I enjoy these carefully plotted thrillers,

7 hotel employees each with a part to play in a mission to assassinate someone who visits the hotel. Except they don’t know when they have to carry out their part until one day the text arrives to set in motion the plan. None of them know of each other’s involvement. The story is told as a series of interviews with the employees after the event itself. It’s a unique way to tell a story. For some parts of the study I felt like I was on drugs! It was like a puzzle to be unravelled bit by bit. Satisfying to read but not sure I enjoyed it!

I blew through this book, intrigued by the synopsis and then again by the witty delivery of narrative by way of very strange interviews. The idea of espionage fuckups was admittedly very appealing. Despite some amusing parts though as the book came to a close I realised that I wasn't very satisfied. Like a lot of my recent reads this one has a tenuous thread of Covid woven throughout which seemed like an afterthought- really it could have taken place at any point in time. Seven Down isn't bad at all but I just felt like I wanted more than I got out of reading it.

Deliciously clever and original, if at times exhausting under the weight of its own cleverness and originality, this is a very different kind of a spy novel. Structured as a series of seven long interviews/debriefings, this is a story of a failed political assassination and attempts by powers that be to understand what went wrong, how and why.
This was an event years in the making. Seven people placed in a position as employees at an inn, programmed to wait for a verbal cue to spring into action. But people being what they are (flawed, complex bunch of weirdos) things did not quite go according to plan. In fact, they managed to go pretty wildly awry.
This is a debut novel (although the author has had a collection of short stories published before)served as an auspicious introduction to a talented and intelligent storyteller. The tone gets immediately established from the foreword which lists three very bizarre things about international espionage that the author uncovered in course of his research. And that’s exactly the tone the novel maintains, that fine balance between sinister and absurd, the dangerous and ridiculous. Satires don’t have to be hilariously roll on the floor laughing funny to be effective, but they do have to be smart and this is a smart one. The laughs are of more a wry droll variety, which works for me.
I’m not a fan of spy fiction, but this fun with spies version of the genre was very entertaining. The stream of consciousness narrative would have probably gotten tiresome had there been a larger number of players, but at seven it hits just right. Made for a very fun read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

The Company has a mission to be carried out. In order to carry out their plan they have 7 operatives stationed inside the King William Hotel in Toronto. Each operative has a part to play to fulfil the mission however none of them know about each other. When the mission goes awry the Company tries to figure what happened.

The book details the transcript of interviews with each of the operatives and the role they played in the mission.

This was certainly a unique read and at times reminded me of Anxious People. The format of the book was interesting and different. I liked the stories of some the operatives better than others for sure. Since the book takes place in my home town it was very cool to see references to places I’ve been before. I was slightly confused at times and didn’t fully understand what was happening but I think the ending wrapped things up pretty well.

This afternoon, the sun was shining, so I sat out with my new kindle and got lost in the fantastic 'Seven Down'. “Operation Fear And Trembling” an undercover assassination attempt, has gone catastrophically wrong, but how?

Here is what I thought...

I was quite honestly blown away with 'Seven Down'.

The book itself mimics an intelligence report, which i thought was ingenious! A letter between colleagues placed in the 'file' acts as a prologue - an introduction to the action, a contents pace which introduces each 'chapter' as a different agent's interview, it is incredibly original! Yet, the writing is flawless, effortlessly weaving the events of the day together through the voices of seven sleeper agents, each with a distinct and unique personality creating a rich in-depth story you can not possibly put down!

Seven Down' by David Whitton is an incredibly profound and an incredible read, and one that I will undoubtedly feel the urge to pick up again!


So, what is it all about ?

In a series of interviews, seven hotel employees — all, it turns out, sleeper agents — puzzle out the events of a botched assassination attempt.

Seven ordinary hotel employees. Catering, front desk, management. Seven moles, waiting for years for a single code word, a trigger that will send them into action in a violent event that will end their dull lives as they know them.

The event has failed: the action was a disaster. Each employee is being debriefed by an agent of an invisible organization. These are the transcripts of these interviews. What they reveal is not just the intricate mechanism of an international assassination, but the yearnings inside each of its pawns, the desperation and secret rage that might cause anyone of us to sign up, sell out, and take a plunge into darkness.

Both sinister and absurd, this set of interview transcripts is a puzzle to be solved, a comedy, and a panorama of life. At once sociological, satirical, and scary, it paints portraits of the mundane human failings behind geopolitical machinations.

I thoroughly enjoyed Seven Down, it is a genuinely entertaining novel which tested the brain cells in the best way, a complex character driven drama with some diverse and really compelling characters in a kind of weird group dynamic that keeps you turning those pages.

A selection of sleeper agents, a mission gone awry, an anonymous interviewer trying to get to the bottom of it. That is Seven Down in a nutshell and as each participant in this darkly ironic tale give their account slowly but surely the events of that day becomes clear.

The writing is brilliant, each character having their own unique voice and style, some ironic humour as their tales interact and cross over with others, the reader making the connections as they read. The faceless interviewer interjects sometimes inadvertently adding to the whole and overall it is intellectually twisty and a joy to read.

Definitely recommend.

On a normal day in the near-future Toronto of 2022, very much post-pandemic, seven members of the staff of a hotel, each of whom are in reality sleeper agents with a part to play in a clandestine operation in the hotel, are triggered by a specific phrase in a tweet. The agents are unknown to each other, and by the end of the day, “Operation Fear And Trembling” has gone disastrously wrong. In an effort to discover why, the shadowy Company behind the operation interview the agents.

“Seven Down” is an intelligent novel written in the form of the interview transcripts with the sleeper agents. Cleverly, the contents page of the actual book is the contents page of the folder containing the transcripts. A prologue takes the form of a letter between two colleagues which informs us that the interview transcripts have been assembled out of chronological order, and advises paying attention to the date on each transcript.

We get vivid insights into each person’s personality and life, their hopes and fears, as they relate their parts in the operation. The interviews are funny, philosophical and poignant, and range from casual chats in a bar to Orwellian interrogations. You get a strong sense of the psychological trauma the agents have been through to get to this point in their lives. The narrative comes to a shocking conclusion in the last interview as the true story of what happened is revealed.

A satire on the madness of the world we live in, capitalism, conspiracy theories and, to a lesser but hilarious degree, the weird activities of rich hotel guests, are all targeted. Cultural references abound, and an Elon Musk-like character has a cameo. This story warrants a second or third reading to pick up on all the cool little incidental details. Wildly original, economically written, profound and very now, “Seven Down” is a breath of fresh, vibrant literary air and I read it in one sitting.