Unique and Fantastical Thriller
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…
Thrust into the story from page one, we follow the (at first) unnamed narrator who wakes up as Sebastian Bell, alone and wandering the forest after thinking he witnesses a murder. He soon finds himself a guest at Blackheath, invited by the Hardcastles to attend a party in honor of their daughter freshly returned from Paris after years abroad. But everything is not as it seems because Evelyn will be murdered at 11:00 p.m. The narrator, Aiden Bishop, has eight days to solve her murder, but with a twist: every morning he wakes up as a different guest to relive the same day over again. If he doesn’t solve the murder by 11:00 p.m. on the eighth day, he will have all of his memories removed to relive the cycle over again.
This was a really good read, full of twists and turns. I love the intricacy of this story and how the characters all connected to each other, between Aiden’s hosts as well as Anna and the others. It was a wild ride, and I honestly didn’t know what to expect from one page to the next.
I applaud the author for a job well done. This was such a unique thriller – a combination of a traditional murder mystery with a fantastical almost time-travel element with the entwining timelines – that once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down! There were so many characters to keep track of, which was one of the things that made reading this book over the span of a month a little difficult to keep everyone straight, but I love how their timelines all came together. It was an intricate web carefully spun, which the author did masterfully.
Thank you to NetGalley and BookishFirst for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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…
Thrust into the story from page one, we follow the (at first) unnamed narrator who wakes up as Sebastian Bell, alone and wandering the forest after thinking he witnesses a murder. He soon finds himself a guest at Blackheath, invited by the Hardcastles to attend a party in honor of their daughter freshly returned from Paris after years abroad. But everything is not as it seems because Evelyn will be murdered at 11:00 p.m. The narrator, Aiden Bishop, has eight days to solve her murder, but with a twist: every morning he wakes up as a different guest to relive the same day over again. If he doesn’t solve the murder by 11:00 p.m. on the eighth day, he will have all of his memories removed to relive the cycle over again.
This was a really good read, full of twists and turns. I love the intricacy of this story and how the characters all connected to each other, between Aiden’s hosts as well as Anna and the others. It was a wild ride, and I honestly didn’t know what to expect from one page to the next.
I applaud the author for a job well done. This was such a unique thriller – a combination of a traditional murder mystery with a fantastical almost time-travel element with the entwining timelines – that once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down! There were so many characters to keep track of, which was one of the things that made reading this book over the span of a month a little difficult to keep everyone straight, but I love how their timelines all came together. It was an intricate web carefully spun, which the author did masterfully.
Thank you to NetGalley and BookishFirst for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.