Blurb:

Gosford Park meets Groundhog Day by way of Agatha Christie and Black Mirror – the most inventive story you’ll read

Tonight, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed … Again

It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping.

Review:

I must admit that I have been slightly putting off reading The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle. I’ve heard so much about how complex and intelligent it is that I worried it would go over my head. It is complex – possibly the most high concept novel I ever read – but I absolutely should not have been concerned. I never felt as though I was out of my depth and I enjoyed every second.

Aside from that, The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle is going to be very difficult to review without spoilers, and I’m not sure that my few paragraphs will truly explain what how unique and exciting it is as a piece of work. Stuart Turton has gone on to write other novels (which are also on my TBR), but this is his debut and it’s, quite frankly, astonishing. It’s set in the grounds of Blackheath, the home of Lord and Lady Hardcastle. The author does a wonderful job of describing the house, so that I was able to picture the scenes in great detail and be completely lost in the house and the stories within it.

Each day, Aiden Bishop wakes up in the body of a different person who attended the party at Blackheath house, to help him to discover who is responsible for the death of Evelyn Hardcastle. There is a huge cast of characters and there is a guest list at the beginning of the book to help the reader get to know them all, but to be honest, I never needed to use the list because Stuart Turton has developed and described the characters so well, so it isn’t difficult to distinguish between them. They do all have different traits and I loved finding out more about them, their histories and their reasons for being at the party.

I do not even want to think about how many post its are on the author’s wall! The plotting is genuinely like nothing I have ever seen before! I never reached a point where I thought I could guess all the answers, but there are so many twists and jaw dropping moments that it was very difficult to stop reading! The ending and the final reveals are particularly tense and gripping.

I am looking forward to reading more by this author!

The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle is available from Amazon.