The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Creative premise! I enjoyed unraveling the mystery with the main character so much that I may wait a few years and read it again once I've forgotten the ending!

I really wanted to love everything about this book. To it's credit, it's an amazing concept and brilliantly executed. The writing flows - although I did find it a bit too flowery at times - and the plot is so tight and keeps you guessing. I loved this book right up until the very end. I was disappointed when the murderer was revealed. It made no sense to me - it seemed unnecessarily complicated, it was "too" much. It all just seemed a bit over the top in the end. But perhaps that's just me.

I do recommend this book, because despite the ending I did really enjoy it and I do believe it's an amazing plot.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is an extremely well written, intricate mystery that kept me guessing until the end. It's like an old Agatha Christie meets Clue meets Quantum Leap. There are a lot of details to keep track of, especially jumping from one “host” to another in combination with time travel. Several women in my book club complained it was too confusing.

Tedious.

3.5
I was intrigued and a little intimidated by the premise of this book, but the intimidation wasn't needed. The author does a good job of dropping the reader into the story and having the POV character figure things out along the way. This book feels like a mystery-thriller, and leans more one way or the other depending on which body the main character is inhabiting and how that host's mind works. I did sometimes get annoyed by the footman popping up to be a malicious murderous nuisance in scenes where there was already danger and tension, so he felt like overkill. The descriptions of people are mostly grotesque and include mentions of being fleshy, wrinkled, or gaunt. If it's a maid, they are almost universally described like "[hair color] spilling out of her cap" on introduction. Minor complaint aside, the descriptions across the book in general are very immersive and quickly get you a mental picture of the scene. I was very absorbed in trying to put the pieces of the mystery together, but didn't solve it for myself before the reveal. I don't love when a murderer's motivation is basically just that they're a psychopath, that feels lame. There was so much to the mystery that there should have been enough for a more compelling motivation. I also don't know how I feel about the explanations offered for the premise I remember feeling a little taken out of the story when the plague doctors spoke to each other. I never got a good sense of what time period this was. It seemed like an afterlife thing, like maybe they were in purgatory, but then it sounded like this was the normal prison system for living people?

Content Warnings:
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Death, Gun violence, Blood, and Murder
Moderate: Fatphobia
Minor: Classism, Sexual assault, Rape, Drug abuse, and Alcohol