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wickedgrumpy's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
To relate it to a movie mash up, take Being John Malkovich and pair it with Knives Out with a dash of unexplained world building sci-fi time loop situation.
Premise was quite good, but the execution suffered. It dragged in the middle and the wrap up at the end wasn’t very satisfying because it left so many questions unanswered.
Premise was quite good, but the execution suffered. It dragged in the middle and the wrap up at the end wasn’t very satisfying because it left so many questions unanswered.
Content Warnings
Minor: Abandonment, Ableism, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Stalking, Domestic abuse, Toxic friendship, Violence, Child abuse, Child death, Classism, Misogyny, Murder, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Torture, Gore, Toxic relationship, Addiction, Blood, Body shaming, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexism, Drug use, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Self harm, Cursing, Death of parent, Dysphoria, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Medical content, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Rape, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Bullying, and Alcoholism
jhbandcats's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I found this book somewhat overwhelming - it was so convoluted that I felt exhausted reading it. It felt like the author was trying to shoehorn his story into a certain format and it didn’t really fit.
I liked the concept - a single entity jumping, or thrust into, a lot of different bodies. In that sense it reminded me of Claire North’s Touch. But this book left me with too many questions. I felt unsatisfied reading it, that too much was going on for it to make sense.
That said, I liked the story. I just wish it had been tighter.
An aside: I wonder why this is titled The 7 1/2 Deaths whereas the British edition is The Seven Deaths. Perhaps because The Seven Deaths of Evelyn H [Hardcastle] is too close to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn H [Hugo]?
I liked the concept - a single entity jumping, or thrust into, a lot of different bodies. In that sense it reminded me of Claire North’s Touch. But this book left me with too many questions. I felt unsatisfied reading it, that too much was going on for it to make sense.
That said, I liked the story. I just wish it had been tighter.
An aside: I wonder why this is titled The 7 1/2 Deaths whereas the British edition is The Seven Deaths. Perhaps because The Seven Deaths of Evelyn H [Hardcastle] is too close to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn H [Hugo]?
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Classism, Alcoholism, Fatphobia, Gore, Sexual assault, Suicide attempt, Murder, Violence, Drug use, and Eating disorder
medini_l's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug use, Violence, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Murder, Blood, Death, Classism, Sexual assault, Eating disorder, and Child death
goldfishtish's review against another edition
challenging
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
At least two of these stars are probably based on sheer admiration for the ingenuity of the concept and plot. It's quite a feat! I'm honestly not sure that this could have been achieved before spreadsheets were invented.
First, a few of the negatives.
Semi tongue in cheek, but one of the worst parts of the experience of reading this was the number of characters. Right up to and including the final act I was skipping back to the character list to remind myself who people were. However, given that the people who the main character inhabits would be a book cast by themselves, I accept that it was unavoidable. I just wish that more characters could have had names that reminded you who they were (Madeline! Because she's French!) or nicknames based on a feature of them (the footman!) or just DISTINCT names (Daniel and Davies, seriously?). And it was cruel to refer to some by a mix of first name and surname, even it was character appropriate. But it could have been worse. At least there was a character list.
With everything that was going on in the plot, perhaps it is also unsurprising that some aspects of the novel are underdeveloped. Partially this is because a lot of the character development that drives the events of the book has happened over several decades, before the book starts, and also the people it happened to have forgotten it. I never really felt I had a handle on Aiden and Anna's bond, despite that being the emotional heart of the book.
More importantly, considering plot is the point of this, significant chunks of the explanation for why the time loop is happening are revealed and then quickly swept away before we can probe them too deeply. What kind of international terrorist murderer was Anna exactly? Have they actually been in there for decades, bodies ageing in the real world so that they'll be decrepit when they emerge, or is this a time-dilated mental prison? How far in the future is this set? The technology is clearly incredible, but the period appears to be familiar enough to Aiden that he subconciously understands all the cultural references and technology, even early on when his hosts give him very little information. And most confusingly of all, the book seems to want to have it two ways- that this is a real murder that hadn't been solved even though you could clearly use this technology to solve the murder within days not decades, and that it's a heightened, horrible experience designed to torture people, with every background guest at the party grotesque and inneffably wrong in some deep way. I felt like it would have been much more believable for the whole thing to be a fake, elaborately plotted test, with the Plague Doctor knowing the answers all along, even if it would have made him less sympathetic and dulled the triumph of saving Evelyn. It would have even made a virtue of the fact that crimes in complex murder mysteries are always preposterously elaborate!
I had to skim some of the Ravencroft parts because the way he was described made me uncomfortable, and not in the way the author intended. Not just the gratuitous, perversely gleeful descriptions of how disgusting his physical appearance was (so ugly it makes the main character weep??) but the way it was explicitly linked to a deep, near inhuman need and emptiness inside Ravencroft, as if it's a moral failing to be fat.
Finally, it irritated me that Aiden never got put into a woman's body, as if that was an unthinkable bridge too far that never even occurred to anyone. I honestly just assumed he would be at some point! Seems like a missed opportunity for an author who enjoyed drawing out the subtle differences in the way the various hosts saw the world.
Having thought all about the things I didn't like, I almost want to drop a star or two, but a murder mystery lives and dies by tension and surprise, and this had that in spades. Some plot twists I saw coming, but many I did not. Once I got into it (and the first time I tried to read it I didn't, and set this aside for several months, it takes a while to settle in) I found it very vivid and immediate, with just the right level of description to make the setting come to life without losing my attention, and just the level of introspection and emotion to really get me into the protaganist's head. Fatphobia aside, the book did a great job of sketching the hosts' distinctive personalities, strengths and weaknesses, giving them all their own flavour even when they weren't really present. The supporting cast were also more three dimensional than I expected, even given how irrationally a mystery this elaborate sometimes requires them to be. In the end I stayed up until 1 am to finish this, which means the book did exactly what it set out to do.
Semi tongue in cheek, but one of the worst parts of the experience of reading this was the number of characters. Right up to and including the final act I was skipping back to the character list to remind myself who people were. However, given that the people who the main character inhabits would be a book cast by themselves, I accept that it was unavoidable. I just wish that more characters could have had names that reminded you who they were (Madeline! Because she's French!) or nicknames based on a feature of them (the footman!) or just DISTINCT names (Daniel and Davies, seriously?). And it was cruel to refer to some by a mix of first name and surname, even it was character appropriate. But it could have been worse. At least there was a character list.
With everything that was going on in the plot, perhaps it is also unsurprising that some aspects of the novel are underdeveloped. Partially this is because a lot of the character development that drives the events of the book has happened over several decades, before the book starts, and also the people it happened to have forgotten it. I never really felt I had a handle on Aiden and Anna's bond, despite that being the emotional heart of the book.
More importantly, considering plot is the point of this, significant chunks of the explanation for why the time loop is happening are revealed and then quickly swept away before we can probe them too deeply. What kind of international terrorist murderer was Anna exactly? Have they actually been in there for decades, bodies ageing in the real world so that they'll be decrepit when they emerge, or is this a time-dilated mental prison? How far in the future is this set? The technology is clearly incredible, but the period appears to be familiar enough to Aiden that he subconciously understands all the cultural references and technology, even early on when his hosts give him very little information. And most confusingly of all, the book seems to want to have it two ways- that this is a real murder that hadn't been solved even though you could clearly use this technology to solve the murder within days not decades, and that it's a heightened, horrible experience designed to torture people, with every background guest at the party grotesque and inneffably wrong in some deep way. I felt like it would have been much more believable for the whole thing to be a fake, elaborately plotted test, with the Plague Doctor knowing the answers all along, even if it would have made him less sympathetic and dulled the triumph of saving Evelyn. It would have even made a virtue of the fact that crimes in complex murder mysteries are always preposterously elaborate!
I had to skim some of the Ravencroft parts because the way he was described made me uncomfortable, and not in the way the author intended. Not just the gratuitous, perversely gleeful descriptions of how disgusting his physical appearance was (so ugly it makes the main character weep??) but the way it was explicitly linked to a deep, near inhuman need and emptiness inside Ravencroft, as if it's a moral failing to be fat.
Finally, it irritated me that Aiden never got put into a woman's body, as if that was an unthinkable bridge too far that never even occurred to anyone. I honestly just assumed he would be at some point! Seems like a missed opportunity for an author who enjoyed drawing out the subtle differences in the way the various hosts saw the world.
Having thought all about the things I didn't like, I almost want to drop a star or two, but a murder mystery lives and dies by tension and surprise, and this had that in spades. Some plot twists I saw coming, but many I did not. Once I got into it (and the first time I tried to read it I didn't, and set this aside for several months, it takes a while to settle in) I found it very vivid and immediate, with just the right level of description to make the setting come to life without losing my attention, and just the level of introspection and emotion to really get me into the protaganist's head. Fatphobia aside, the book did a great job of sketching the hosts' distinctive personalities, strengths and weaknesses, giving them all their own flavour even when they weren't really present. The supporting cast were also more three dimensional than I expected, even given how irrationally a mystery this elaborate sometimes requires them to be. In the end I stayed up until 1 am to finish this, which means the book did exactly what it set out to do.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia and Body shaming
Moderate: Eating disorder
prettycloud's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
A whirlwind mystery, continually bamboozling and delightful, excellently paced. New clues only lead to new questions, and though the ending is a series of twists, they make sense and satisfy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Self harm, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Violence
Moderate: Death of parent, Fatphobia, and Infidelity
Minor: Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Eating disorder, Addiction, Alcohol, Classism, Confinement, Kidnapping, Medical content, and Grief
No in-text rape but a perspective character has raped women in the past. No in-text drug abuse but a perspective character is still high from previous drug use and there is alcohol use and abuse.
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