e-ARC Review: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton|A crazy psychological experiment|

Blurb (as on Goodreads):

The Rules of Blackheath

Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11:00 p.m.
There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit.
We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer.
Understood? Then let’s begin…

Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others…

The most inventive debut of the year twists together a mystery of such unexpected creativity it will leave readers guessing until the very last page.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a mystery within a lot of mysteries. The Hardcastle house in Blackheath is full of secrets. The people here hold grudges for longer than a lifetime, and everything about this house is dark and dangerous.

Aiden has been given 8 lives and 8 different set of hosts to solve the infamous murder of Evelyn Hardcastle. But each body has a mind that wants to take over Aiden’s sense of reasoning, and each body shares a different fate. The whole point is to solve the murder without losing one’s individuality.

I loved the concept. The world building was quite good too- dark and secretive. The characters are one of a kind and quite layered. Each character has been built from scratch and given a distinct past, present, and future. The problem arises with the twists. The twists are placed unevenly and a lot of details are unnecessary. The book could easily have been a 100 pages shorted and I would enjoy it more.

The story is overwhelming and quite slow most of the time. There are a lot of details and there’s a constant struggle to remember everything at a given point in time. The ending is quite good. Loved the big reveal but I was too exhausted at the end to actually enjoy such a thrilling ending.

I would recommend this book if you are okay with a lot of details, love epic plot twists and not get bothered by a slow paced book.

Purchase Links:                  |Amazon Paperback| Amazon Kindle|