Reviews with content warning for Body horror - The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

31 reviews

brittaanson's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I wanted to love this book, and the beginning really sucked me in with the mystery. The structure is ambitious and intriguing, but by the end, I was confused and unsatisfied. Partly due to the nature of the plot, there wasn’t any deep character development, and as the truth of what was going on was revealed, I disliked the story more and more. The ending has so many twists that didn’t feel completely earned, and by that point I didn’t care about any of the characters. The rules, ethics, and motivations of those driving the story remain ill-defined to me. I didn’t enjoy the violence and aggressive fat phobia in the book. However, I will concede that the cleverness of the overall concept may be enough for someone else to find more satisfaction in this read than I did.

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juanat77's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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wickedgrumpy's review

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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.

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jess_tries2read's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious tense fast-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

This book was completely unique to anything I had read. It took the trope of a dramatic murder at a creepy, rich-people mansion to a whole other level.

The story starts in the most dramatic way possible: a consciousness in a body they don't remember, nor do they remember anything else, except one name, Anna. This character is dragged into a neverending whirlwind of events once he sees a woman sprinting through the forest crying for help. Eventually he ends up a Blackheath, a blighted estate that once held prestige, until it was marred by the death of one of the Hardcadtle children 19 years ago.

The unique mystery had me in its grip until it ended.

The implication of the cosmic race/justice system is so compelling. The Plague Doctor was a great figure, terrifying and illuminating. You were scared to see him but also thrilled because you get to peek behind the veil of the bigger story. The body switching was the perfect, dramatic backdrop to obscure the simpler mystery of Evelyn's death.

5/5

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breadbummer's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

On the whole, it's an interesting premise. What if someone took your run-of-the-mill Victorian murder mystery but twisted it a little to make it so the same person was living the same day over and over again in other people's bodies? In my case, as someone who's always found sleuth stories about rich people getting murdered at fancy parties to be cheesy and repetitive, I found this story to be...well, cheesy and repetitive. Not repetitive in itself, but it uses the types of characters and themes typically found in this genre.

As far as content goes, whenever a cis man writes a book like this with not a few female characters in it, I expect a "she breasted boobily down the stairs" moment to show itself before too terribly long or at least for pretty much all the women to fall for the central male character (no matter how strongly they're written) but, to my pleasant surprise, I don't ever actually remember this happening. HOWEVER!!! If you're particularly sensitive to fatphobia, don't bother even touching this book, much less opening it up. The rather long section in which the main character goes through the day as Ravencourt is punctuated pretty much every sentence or two with disgust of the host's body. It got to be so uncomfortable that I almost dropped the book entirely if it weren't for the fact that I was behind on my reading goal.

I just finished it like half an hour ago, so my take on the ending might still need some time to cook, but I think I enjoyed it. I certainly got got about who the culprit ended up being (which took me some time to appreciate more), and I thought the idea of this whole scenario of Blackheath being kind of like

the episode "White Christmas" from Black Mirror absolutely fascinating to say the least (still wondering if the events at the mansion actually happened earlier on in the timeline and that the plague doctors gained control of it or if absolutely everything was conjured up by them).

I was originally gonna go with a rating of 3.25, but these final twists bumped it up a bit.

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bergha1998's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

It’s a groundhog’s day Clue mystery. Everyday the main character wakes up as a different guest at a country party trying to solve a murder. Every different guest has the MC’s soul, but their own personalities and wants. The plot twists are crazy. Such a good mystery with a lot about morality and character development.

Murder Mystery, Slightly Fantastical, Lots of Violence/Murders

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