Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

I was intrigued and a little intimidated by the premise of this book, but the intimidation wasn't needed. The author does a good job of dropping the reader into the story and having the POV character figure things out along the way. This book feels like a mystery-thriller, and leans more one way or the other depending on which body the main character is inhabiting and how that host's mind works. I did sometimes get annoyed by the

footman popping up to be a malicious murderous nuisance in scenes where there was already danger and tension, so he felt like overkill.

The descriptions of people are mostly grotesque and include mentions of being fleshy, wrinkled, or gaunt. If it's a maid, they are almost universally described like "[hair color] spilling out of her cap" on introduction. Minor complaint aside, the descriptions across the book in general are very immersive and quickly get you a mental picture of the scene. I was very absorbed in trying to put the pieces of the mystery together, but didn't solve it for myself before the reveal.

I don't love when a murderer's motivation is basically just that they're a psychopath, that feels lame. There was so much to the mystery that there should have been enough for a more compelling motivation.

I also don't know how I feel about the explanations offered for the premise

I remember feeling a little taken out of the story when the plague doctors spoke to each other. I never got a good sense of what time period this was. It seemed like an afterlife thing, like maybe they were in purgatory, but then it sounded like this was the normal prison system for living people??

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pageturner777's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

What a let down. There’s so much to slog through just to get to the end which was an incredibly sloppy & rushed finish. I think it’s a cool concept and I was very excited about it. I kept pushing through the book because I was really hopeful the ending would have a twist that would wrap everything up or explain. Nope. To everyone that DNF, you didn’t miss anything.

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dorin_d's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.5

initially slow to start but after 3/4 if the way through i found that i could not put it down! a murder mystery with a time loop at its centre made reading it sometimes confusing, but still enjoyable. i do wonder if the book may have too many plot twists, especially when

we find out this loop is happening inside a prison as punishment for inmates, like a black mirror episode,

as i found this introduced more questions than answers.

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proseandclothes's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

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

4.25

A fun read, this murder mystery had me thinking I’d solved the next step only to be surprised over and over again. Keeping track of the timelines, characters, motives, etc. was tough (but in a good way—it’s what kept me guessing in attempts to keep everyone straight!). The pace picks up abruptly in the latter half of the book.

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mnemosyne139's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-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? Yes

4.5

I'm really glad I finally got around to reading this book. The last quarter or third of the book definitely sucked me in and kept me engaged wanting to know the answers. I think the only thing that annoyed me was how many times the author put in a situation where the MC said he knew something, but didn't tell the audience. I understand why it was done, so it ultimately doesn't bother me now, but it did while reading it. I do think the story is structured so that a reader could potentially figure it out, but I did not really see any of the reveals coming. I can't say I was SURPRISED by them, but I didn't guess them.

I also appreciate the ambiguity of when this is all taking place. When you find out the what, it seems like it has to be in the future, but we never get to see that world. I also wish we had more details on what exactly it was that Anna did in her past life. I know it's kept vague on purpose because it isn't supposed to matter anymore, but my brain is not satisfied with that.

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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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mrsdexter's review against another edition

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mysterious 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? No

4.0

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hello_lovely13's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.25

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