You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Scan barcode
thecriticalreader's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
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? It's complicated
4.0
Why I Read It: The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton first came onto my radar when I was looking for books involving time loops, since I love time loops. Months later, I saw it in the bookstore and decided to pick it up.
Review:
Turton should get a standing ovation for the brilliance of this book’s concept. It’s incredibly original, and no lazy author would have even come close to touching it. The execution of the concept is also laudable, as Turton’s beautiful writing and detailed thought made this book a joy to read. I never felt impatient about figuring out the mystery; I was content to let the story unfold and follow the main character step by step as he painfully learns more and more about his situation. Despite the undeniably convoluted plot, I was able to follow along, and I appreciated the moral questions Turton poses throughout the story. More importantly, the characters’ motivations and actions felt well-thought-out and realistic. It would have been far too easy for everything to feel contrived, but for most of the book, this is not the case.
I knew that no matter how amazing most of the book was, my ultimate measure of the book would rest heavily on the conclusion. While the conclusion is not the disaster it could have been—no plot holes are introduced, and it remains well-thought-out—unfortunately, it did not quite live up to my hopes. It fell into the trap mysteries so often fall into, in which the author springs a twist so out of left field that it feels contrived and requires a lengthy explanation to understand. The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle did not need such a twist for me to feel impressed by the mystery and the book’s intelligence. I felt that the ending somewhat betrayed the main character’s arc. My main problem with the ending was Anna’s character. How am I supposed to believe that one of the world’s most evil people somehow becomes a good person by endlessly cycling through time loops in a setting that is described as “poisonous” in its immorality and corruption?
One other thing that bothered me considerably was the fatphobic language. The language Turton uses to describe a fat character is unnecessarily cruel.
One other thing that bothered me considerably was the fatphobic language. The language Turton uses to describe a fat character is unnecessarily cruel.
The Run-Down:
You will probably like The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle if:
· You are intrigued by unique, original premises
You might not like The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle if:
· You dislike intricate plots
· You go into the book wedded to your expectations
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Death, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Medical content, Murder, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Ableism, Addiction, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Infidelity, Rape, Torture, Blood, and Alcohol
Minor: Cursing, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, and War
marigold82's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide and Murder
Moderate: Body shaming and Blood
twistykris's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-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
2.0
I honestly was going to DNF this book about 20% in and I wish I had. I loved the concept of this (especially since I'm going through a phase of wanting to read murder mysteries) but I seriously struggled getting through this.
- The fatphobia made me so so uncomfortable. Aiden is in a host body of one character, and every other paragraph talks about how "huge" and "grotesque" this man is, and how every piece of furniture "creaks" under his "immense" weight, and how he has "many greasy chins." It felt excessive and unnecessary (yes, he's fat, you hate how fat he is when you're in his body, we get it. And sure, maybe some of it was
because the thoughts and memories of the hosts start to take over Aiden's mind, and maybe this is that character's own self-hate and internalized fatphobia but YIKES ). - I don't mind reading a book I feel is dense or challenging. But maybe my brain was just not prepared for the absolute string-and-post-it-note levels of dense this book felt. I had to make a GoogleDoc to keep track of who said what when and who interacted with who because as it turns out, tiny little details would pop up later and I had to be constantly re-reading and flipping back to previous chapters, and not in a fun "OH I'M MAKING A CONNECTION" way; more of a "wait, who said what? I'm so confused" way. To be honest: this book made me feel dumb as hell at times.
- I couldn't seem to be invested in these characters. I felt a twinge of it for Aiden closer to the ending after a big reveal, but nothing that made me hold my breath in anticipation, fear, or excitement.
- Without spoilers: the ending left me feeling a sort of "ick."
- There were some things that felt unanswered in an unsatisfying way.
All in all, I'm giving this a 2.25- this book wasn't for me. I went into this book, craving a "Benoit Blanc"-style mystery but it left me feeling disappointed. Maybe it was a wrong-book-wrong-time scenario, maybe I would never have enjoyed this. But I leave with the knowledge that I need to learn when to put a book down if it isn't giving me satisfaction.
If you enjoy a book that will make you put up a whiteboard to keep track of the intricate webs, if you enjoy multiple twists that leave you feeling a smidge lost and wanting to find the connections, if you feel compelled to immediately re-read a complex book so you can pick up on all the details you missed the first time, this might be the book for you.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Fatphobia, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Rape, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Minor: Ableism and Death of parent
laurajordensharris's review against another edition
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Body shaming, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Infertility, Infidelity, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and Classism
phantomgecko's review against another edition
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? It's complicated
5.0
An enigma wrapped in a mystery. Mindbending. Have you seen Source Code? This is Source Code but with more layers.
The pacing of discovery was good. Enough questions were answered along the way to keep my interest. Semi-answered questions also made new puzzles acceptable.
The reader is supposed to care about the characters and how they feel. I didn't. But it didn't lessen my enjoyment of the robust plot. To be fair, plenty about character motivation, personal dilemma and interpersonal relationships exist in this book. I just dodged all of that because I cared more about answers.
The resolution didn't disappoint. The ending didn't disappoint. Chef's kiss, A++
The pacing of discovery was good. Enough questions were answered along the way to keep my interest. Semi-answered questions also made new puzzles acceptable.
The reader is supposed to care about the characters and how they feel. I didn't. But it didn't lessen my enjoyment of the robust plot. To be fair, plenty about character motivation, personal dilemma and interpersonal relationships exist in this book. I just dodged all of that because I cared more about answers.
The resolution didn't disappoint. The ending didn't disappoint. Chef's kiss, A++
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body shaming, Child death, Confinement, Death, Fatphobia, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Drug abuse, Drug use, and Alcohol
lo_fi's review against another edition
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Body shaming, Forced institutionalization, and Police brutality
bencaroline's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
hopeful
mysterious
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Fatphobia, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Ableism, Suicide, Blood, and Alcohol
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: Body shaming and Fatphobia
Moderate: Eating disorder
smkelly1997's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
This book is slow in the beginning but it works. It all adds up. The last 25% of the book I didn’t want to put down. The twists and turns and a major plot twist at the end.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Body shaming, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Grief, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, and Classism
genny's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
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
4.75
I was apprehensive about this book because I felt lukewarm about The Devil and the Dark Water, but I enjoyed this so much more! Tense and gripping, this could make for a really fun live-action adaptation. I also think it would've been fun to annotate a physical copy (I had the ebook from my library) and go ham with plotting time stamps, locations, etc. 😆
It's a testament to Turton's writing that the protagonist's voice always felt distinct despite him waking up in different bodies. For all of Aiden's confusion, he was still way smarter than me because I was scrambling to keep up with his plans, haha. He was always one step ahead of me in figuring it all out, but it was entertaining enough that I didn't mind just going along for the ride. The glimpses we got of the "outside world" were enough to establish some sort of dystopian society, and this (along with some important reveals) allowed for commentary on the justice system that I thought was well-done. Surprisingly, I got quite emotional towards the end! I'd give this 5 stars except all of the language regarding Ravencourt's body bothered me (check content warnings); I understand needing to emphasize the difficulties of each host but the author went over-the-top there IMO.
It's a testament to Turton's writing that the protagonist's voice always felt distinct despite him waking up in different bodies. For all of Aiden's confusion, he was still way smarter than me because I was scrambling to keep up with his plans, haha. He was always one step ahead of me in figuring it all out, but it was entertaining enough that I didn't mind just going along for the ride. The glimpses we got of the "outside world" were enough to establish some sort of dystopian society, and this (along with some important reveals) allowed for commentary on the justice system that I thought was well-done. Surprisingly, I got quite emotional towards the end! I'd give this 5 stars except all of the language regarding Ravencourt's body bothered me (check content warnings); I understand needing to emphasize the difficulties of each host but the author went over-the-top there IMO.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Child death, Death, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Suicide, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, Torture, and Grief
Minor: Alcohol
Aiden inhabits the body of an obese man and there's a LOT of comments about how difficult it was to navigate his surroundings, being unable to stop gorging on food, feeling useless because of his body, etc. He also inhabits the body of a rapist. He doesn't sexually attack anyone but feels the urge to do so.