Book Review | The Seven and half deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

This has to be the most engaging book I have read so far in 2019. 

So, while I am really not a very big reader of mystery thriller genre, I do sometimes come across the books with interesting premise that makes me excited to read them - 'The seven and half deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle' was one of them and I, not in the least was disappointed by the execution.This book has such an interesting plot and subplots within it, that I was completely hooked.

Hardcastle couple are organizing a masquerading ball at Blackheath manor, as a welcome gesture to their daughter Evelyn's return from Paris. On that same morning, our MC Aiden Bishop,finds himself in the middle of jungle- with no memory of his own in an unknown body and a name 'Anna' on his mouth. Eventually, he gets to know that to escape he has eight chances, through eight different bodies and find the real culprit of a murder that is going to happen in that ball at 11PM. 

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.

What a page turner! I absolutely loved the way Stuart Turton wrote this mystery, even for a hefty book, it never felt boring and kept me engaged. As his debut novel, he did an extraordinary Job of writing a mystery worthy of even competing against some of the classics by Agatha Christie. 

Here you follow so many characters going through the same day again and again,and due to that it had so much potential to end up as a disaster in the danger of getting too repetitive and too difficult to follow - but it never happened for me. Why? Because each character felt different from another, had different voices, personalities and choices. As Aiden is changing bodies, he is also taking the strong and weak points of that person with their body, personality and mind . Hence, every character makes different choices which takes us on another part of the story or you can say missing puzzle of the mystery - I loved how it all played out. There were so many unexpected and surprising subplots that were very hard to even imagine.

“So many memories and secrets, so many burdens. Every life has such weight. I don’t know how anybody carries even one.”

The only reason it was not a full five star for me was some decisions Aiden made by the end for his own life, it could have been better with some different explanation. Apart from that, it is definitely a gem in mystery/thriller genre for me!

Overall Rating - 4.5 stars!

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