A review by abbymiller616
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

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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