Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

68 reviews

bealittlebrave's review against another edition

adventurous challenging 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

5.0

To call this "ambitious" is such an understatement. I don't understand how anyone can even begin to layout this story and its timelines (and at this point I'm trusting blindly that they all add up correctly because I wouldn't know if he snuck one past me).

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Dementia, Suicide, Rape, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Infidelity, Death, Abandonment, Alcohol, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Addiction, Classism, Confinement, Sexual assault, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Grief, Violence, Drug use, Torture, Suicide attempt, and Stalking

jhews's review

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Murder, Addiction, Torture, Suicide, Sexual harassment, Alcohol, and Drug use

kaleewinterbottom's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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: Blood, Fatphobia, Murder, Self harm, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Violence, and Drug abuse

Moderate: Addiction, Child death, Death, Grief, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Injury/Injury detail, and Stalking

tacoshark's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.0

Look, this book is impressive in a lot of ways - the plotting is intricate and holds up, and the ultimate mystery is well done and satisfying. However, there are some things about this book that are just too disturbing to let go. First, it’s incredibly violent and a little bit gleefully, at that. Second, there’s a character who is subjected to such disgusting and extensive fat-shaming that it’s repellent (especially when in the readers guide, you learn that this is the author’s favorite character and he wanted to make him deplorable - hard not to connect the dots that he purposely made the character fat so he could use that as another of his negative traits - it’s truly gross). Finally, one of the POV characters is acknowledged to be a serial rapist and yet there’s no accountability for that (in a book theoretically about punishing the monstrous) and you’re, at times, asked to sympathize with him. I finished this because I wanted to see if the plot would hold up, but I will never read this author again and I can’t recommend you do either. This book gets a lot of hype and honestly, it’s gross that it has all this in it and people are still recommending it. I’m only giving it two stars because it is a feat of plotting, but if you care about any of the above, don’t read it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Murder, Ableism, Child death, Classism, Drug use, Suicide, Addiction, Fatphobia, Body shaming, and Gore

Moderate: Sexual violence and Sexual assault

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.

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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.

No in-text suicide but a perspective character sees what they think is

suicide. Several murders happen in a thriller/murder mystery context, so there's grief and trauma but the vibe is more action-y and solution-oriented. If you have trauma around the "justice" system, be warned that the main characters

are on trial/imprisoned in a fantasy/metaphysical way, so there's no literal lawyer/judge/prison content, but their freedom will be decided based on a judgment of their actions.

abbymiller616'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? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

This book was a trip from start to finish. I won’t lie: it was pretty slow-moving until about 60%. I absolutely LOVED the concept of the novel and was very excited to begin the book, but the entire first part of the book had me so confused that it was like trying to put together a puzzle that doesn’t have edge pieces to frame the rest of the puzzle with to start. Even with the book synopsis, I felt utterly lost, which was most likely Turton’s intention, but it was a bit discouraging. For the rest of the book, there were frustrating valleys like this that would motivate me to put the book down and return to a reality that I understood, however, as I’ve said, at around 60/70%, the pace began to pick up as pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. I’m not sure if I really did appreciate who the true murderer was in the end… I felt disappointed since there were hardly any clues left for the reader to pick up on that would lead to the true conclusion earlier on. (I love to have theories earlier on so that I can prove them right!) Overall, I think I learned to appreciate Turton’s writing style and layout of this twisted mystery… I can’t imagine all of the brainstorming and rearranging it took to put the vision onto paper, so I applaud him for that. I’ve had this novel on my “want to read” shelf for 4 years, so I think all of that anticipation led to unreasonable expectations for which I have only myself to blame. In the end, I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good multi-faceted, open-ended mystery where there’s not really just one right answer. Just as the characters get tangled in the mirage, so will you, reader.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Suicide attempt, Child death, Death, and Rape

Moderate: Addiction

abbs15norm's review against another edition

challenging 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Violence, Suicide, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Murder, and Child death

Minor: Addiction, Animal death, Classism, Infidelity, Self harm, and Rape

whatathymeitwas's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective 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? It's complicated

5.0

This was a really wonderful experience. When I first started it, I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about it, as everything is a bit befuddled and there's a reasonably large cast of characters involved, but it's so well written I was immersed and attached in no time.

This reminded me a bit of the play/TV film "An Inspector Calls." Not necessarily for any real direct reason other than they're both examples of very unique ways to approach a mystery, but that alone must have made the connection. I'll be very excited to watch this whenever they finally get it in series form.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Classism, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Torture, Violence, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Blood, Body shaming, Bullying, Fatphobia, Mental illness, Murder, Grief, Gun violence, Rape, and Stalking

blueberryelf's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark 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: Gun violence, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Panic attacks/disorders, Torture, Grief, Murder, Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Child death, Gore, Medical content, Sexual harassment, Suicide attempt, Abandonment, Blood, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Drug use, and Emotional abuse

starsbyname's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Suicide attempt, Suicide, Blood, Murder, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Child death, Death, Addiction, Animal death, and Gore