Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

59 reviews

emory's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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? Yes

Amazingly detailed and fleshed out mystery and setting, but the 4th dimension chess about Aiden interacting with himself in other bodies throughout the day kind of ruined it for me. I was expecting the day to reset and his other bodies to return to their natural course of action on the day each time he failed to solve the murder; while I don't want to fault a novel for not living up to what I expected, the mystery itself seemed to take a backseat to our narrator trying to puzzle out where to be and what information he already knows in other hosts' brains. Not to mention how many paradoxes he creates by changing the way he interacts with old hosts (and the amount of time he spends trying to do this and his nonsensical failures at it). We're withheld important clues more than once to make the reveal more dramatic, and we're meant to remember details mentioned once, but reminded over and over again of obvious information--such as why our narrator is scared of someone literally hunting him down--as if we'd have no idea. 

The appearance of a masked mystery character who showed up just to tell our narrator exactly what was going on got on my nerves as well. I wasn't particularly sold on the reason Aiden was at Blackheath anyway, but surely there was some better way to insert that idea and others into the plot besides having a character who constantly shows up to dump information at us?

Laundry list of annoyances aside, it's a great version of those classic sorts of "big house, high society, dirty secrets" mysteries. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Suicide, Fatphobia, Death, Murder, and Child death

Moderate: Rape

Minor: Animal death

One character our narrator inhabits is described as very fat, and while in this body the narrator never stops talking about how disgusting and shameful it is and how he can barely move. It is very oversold and strongly implied that

this character forcing a woman under half his age to marry him by bribing her family

is made more horrifying because he is fat. The narrator inhabits the body of a man who is a serial rapist (not spoiler tagging bc it is one of the first things he learns about the man). No attacks are shown or described graphically but other characters speak flippantly of the crimes.

breadbummer's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Fatphobia, Murder, Child death, Suicide, Body shaming, Stalking, and Classism

Moderate: Self harm, Gun violence, Confinement, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Sexual assault, Drug use, Animal death, Rape, Car accident, Blood, and Body horror

emcheym's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

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

5.0

I love the writing style the author uses in this book. The language is so descriptive and the plot is complex. It’s a bit hard to follow at times, but I’m really impressed with the thought and detail that went into the writing. I might consider rereading it at some point just to help understand more of the details.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Murder, Death, and Violence

Moderate: Sexual assault, Child death, and Rape

Minor: Addiction, Alcohol, Animal death, Fire/Fire injury, and Mental illness

anneenichole's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Murder, Death, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child death, Violence, Animal death, and Blood

Minor: Rape and Drug use

lonicera_fragrantissima's review against another edition

mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Can't recommend the audiobook, the reader was not up to the task - female voices were not good and male voices undifferentiated - a problem given the large cast of characters and complex plot frequently advanced via conversation. The premise is really interesting and I wanted to like it (there's a character I bet is an homage to Nero Wolfe!). But it was too convoluted, over-long, superficial, and ultimately very tedious with an incredible number of unmotivated plot twists and arbitrary rules governing character behavior until a character arbitrarily decides to break a rule. I stopped being able to care about what was happening. I might have liked it better reading instead of listening so I could skim/ skip the annoying parts. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Gun violence, and Violence

Moderate: Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Suicide

Minor: Rape

strawberrytheauthor's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Honestly the beginning of the book is kind of slow and frustrating because you know nothing just as Aiden Bishop (the main character) knows nothing. He doesn’t even know his name. It picks up though and then it is a crazy ride.

I tried making multiple guesses about the things that were going to happen in the book but I was often wrong. There were a lot of twists and turns and I definitely did not see the final twist coming. 

When I started reading I thought it would be a four star book at most but it really delivered. When I got to the final day I was worried that all the plot holes would remain holes, but Turton made sure that everything got wrapped up in a neat, tidy bow. 

I loved this book and would read it again. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Infidelity, Animal death, Blood, Classism, Death, Murder, Alcohol, Confinement, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Gun violence, Child death, Suicide attempt, and Violence

Moderate: Drug use, Self harm, Bullying, and Torture

Minor: Medical content, Rape, and Sexual content

cheye13's review against another edition

mysterious tense 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

2.0

The first half of this felt like a very promising murder mystery with a little supernatural twist. It initially seemed that the main character would get over the "rules" and piece together clues over the course of the book. Unfortunately, the back half dropped the ball. The supernatural stuff took over and pieces of the mystery(s) were either dropped, glossed over, or tied up way too conveniently. The premise was promising, but this story tried to hard to be both genres, instead of picking one main one and sprinkling the second genre for flavor.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Violence, Death of parent, Fatphobia, Child death, and Death

Moderate: Animal death, Gore, Medical content, Stalking, Grief, and Gun violence

Minor: Sexual assault, Rape, Kidnapping, Addiction, and Drug abuse

the fatphobia is egregious; it's my reading that it's internalized fatphobia, as it's contained to the chapters in which the main character inhabits the fat persona, intended to exemplify the effect the different hosts' personalities have on the main character, but is still very tactlessly written, and is sustained through a significant portion of the book.

folst015's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Alcohol, Suicide attempt, Drug use, Rape, Death of parent, Gun violence, Murder, Animal death, Blood, Death, Body horror, Child death, Cursing, Fatphobia, and Physical abuse

blackheart's review against another edition

challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

Interesting mystery, with some twitsts and turns I wasn't expecting.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Rape

sarah_speaks's review against another edition

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Death, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Suicide, and Violence

Moderate: Animal death and Child death

Minor: Rape and Infidelity