This book reminded me so much of one of my other favorites of all time, The Night Circus. Like The Night Circus, The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle combines a variety of genres, mystery, thriller, historical fiction, sci-fi, and fantasy and in my opinion, it does so really, really well.
From the blurb on the back of the book, we know that a woman named Evelyn Hardcastle has been murdered, and we know that a man, Aiden Bishop, has to identify her killer and he does so by waking up in the body of a 8 different witnesses on 8 different days. The book starts off running though and doesn't reveal any details to the reader that Aiden doesn't know -- and this will probably bother some readers. However, I really enjoyed having to pick up the puzzle pieces at the same time as Aiden and everything started clicking for me at the same time as him. It felt as though I, along with Aiden, was waking up in the bodies of these different hosts and solving the murder as well.
The author, Stuart Turton, does a fabulous job keeping everything straight, developing strong characters, dropping clues at the right time, and piecing everything together into a nice little bow at the end of the novel. Each and every character has its own distinct voice and its own role to play in the book, and that was something I greatly appreciated and valued. No one is really superfluous to the book, and the twists and turns had me gasping out loud.
I don't want to give away too much, but if you're willing to suspend some belief, and spend some time putting together a good mystery (with several side-mysteries), I highly, highly recommend this book.
Thank you to Bookish First and SourceBooks for my free ARC.
From the blurb on the back of the book, we know that a woman named Evelyn Hardcastle has been murdered, and we know that a man, Aiden Bishop, has to identify her killer and he does so by waking up in the body of a 8 different witnesses on 8 different days. The book starts off running though and doesn't reveal any details to the reader that Aiden doesn't know -- and this will probably bother some readers. However, I really enjoyed having to pick up the puzzle pieces at the same time as Aiden and everything started clicking for me at the same time as him. It felt as though I, along with Aiden, was waking up in the bodies of these different hosts and solving the murder as well.
The author, Stuart Turton, does a fabulous job keeping everything straight, developing strong characters, dropping clues at the right time, and piecing everything together into a nice little bow at the end of the novel. Each and every character has its own distinct voice and its own role to play in the book, and that was something I greatly appreciated and valued. No one is really superfluous to the book, and the twists and turns had me gasping out loud.
I don't want to give away too much, but if you're willing to suspend some belief, and spend some time putting together a good mystery (with several side-mysteries), I highly, highly recommend this book.
Thank you to Bookish First and SourceBooks for my free ARC.