Book Review: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

 The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle 

By Stuart Turton 

 Goodreads Link

Published Year: 2018 

Page count : 445 pages 

Medium Used : Kindle Paperwhite 

Genre : Suspense,Whodunit, Novel Concept,  Science Fiction, Mystery, 2024-read. 

Rating : 3.40/5 😀😀😀

Story Outline 

Its a game. Its a game that is an endless loop, designed to solve a murder mystery. A young girl is reunited with her family after 19 years. A party is thrown to a group of people and she is murdered on the day at 11PM by someone and for some motive unknown. The game rules that those who participate in it should solve the murder and the first person who unravels it gets to leave the game. Three people are participants in it. Anna, Daniel Coleridge and Aiden Bishop. What's more interesting is that they can solve it by embodying a different personality each day for eight days. Only Aiden can do it and the other two just have one body to stick to. So Aiden can see the same day of murder from within the bodies of eight guests and use their position, their deductive skills along with his unrelenting tenacity to solve it. He vows to release not only himself but also Anna. He vows to get out of this game by beating the footman who is chasing to kill them and end each loop. He vows to demystify the person who has put them through this game and get out of it. 

My First Opinion 

I feel this story has become too complex and convoluted to really follow and untangle the mystery. I think the author botched the script a bit. This is his debut novel and that shows. The concept is novel and great. The prose is good, the characters are well portrayed and the ending twist is an absolute gut punch, knock out. But i think he put more emphasis on certain things like the multiple personalities and what is happening to whom, when and how to escape from the footman, that the mystery of who murdered Evelyn Hardcastle becomes sidetracked. It is difficult while reading to keep track of all the stuff going on .. reading shouldn't be so hard right? I guess on a second or third read of the book, one would know what pieces are important and what are not, which to remember and which to discard instead of trying to cram everything or breezing over everything.  

Its a nice read. A warm and cozy read with a cup of hot tea or ☕ coffee. But on the whole, I think it could have been better written or well done. The idea is stunning to say the least. To use people like Anna and Daniel along with Aiden in solving mysteries that were unsolved is novel and a very useful suggestion. But perhaps even the intention is overlooking certain flaws like what if this experiment,  instead of changing a bad person for the better, pushes a sane mind into madness and endless cruelty? Because they can do anything to just get out of the game right?