Book Review: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

So today I'm grumpy because I haven't had time to read as much as I would have liked lately and my TBR is not so much a list as it is a huge, amorphous mass of book titles lurking in the back of my mind.  I have picked up a few things here and there, though, and one of my most recent finishes was The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.

I enjoyed this one.  Though I read the summary before I started it, I was careful to keep away from any reviews or extended summaries or anything that might give away too much or spoil anything in the book.  And honestly, I'm glad.  The premise is pretty unique - and kind of strange, honestly - and I enjoyed not knowing much about it.

So here's the summary from Amazon:

The Rules of BlackheathEvelyn 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...

***

Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others...

The most inventive debut of the year twists together a mystery of such unexpected creativity it will leave readers guessing until the very last page.

Sounds pretty interesting, right?  And in the "A Conversation With the Author" at the end of the book, the inspiration was described as coming from the author's love of time travel, Agatha Christie, and Quantun Leap.  Not mentioned, but something that will definitely be called to mind as you're reading is also Groundhog Day.

There are some definite high points to this book.  The premise, as I said, is very interesting and unique, and I do think it was executed well.  Things were pretty twisty, and as the summary states, the same events are happening day after day and we're seeing them through a different perspective each time.  That has to be very difficult to keep straight, but as I was reading I didn't notice any huge plot holes.  And it was really fascinating to have new information revealed little by little so that even as we're seeing the same events again and again, each new instance unfolds a little more of the story and you learn more and more about what's going on underneath.  The writing is for the most part engaging and accessible, and each character has their own distinct voice.  If you want a pretty satisfying mystery with an interesting premise and a lot of twisty threads, I think you'll enjoy this.

However!  There were a few things that I did not like.  First and foremost, the writing about Ravencourt is... Um, it's bad.  Yeah.  Especially at the beginning of that day, how the narrator/protagonist talked about being in Ravencourt's body was gross.  And let me be very, very clear: Ravencourt being fat was not gross.  The narrator kept talking about how awful it was to be in his body, how humiliating, and how ravenous he was, how constant and gnawing his hunger was.  I almost wanted to stop reading.

Another thing I didn't like was the beginning.  It was very slow and very difficult to get invested in.  This, I think, is because you're dumped in a situation that you, as well as the character, doesn't understand.  Added to that the first character the narrator inhabit's personality, and I got frustrated for the first few pages - maybe the first 50 or so?  Funnily enough, though, there's actually an in-universe context for why this specific character was the first.

The last thing I didn't like is something I can't be too specific about because it's a little bit spoilery, but I will say this: while I definitely thought an ambiguous ending worked, there was so little explanation and so many unanswered questions that it almost veered into the realm of: why include this (basically backstory, the why of the whole Groundhog Day scenario) at all?

I gave this a three star rating on Goodreads - definitely liked it, but didn't love it.

Have you read it?  What did you think?  Interesting side note: this came out very close to another book titled The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (which I have not read yet) and the two have nothing to do with each other, but isn't that a super interesting/weird coincidence?