Y’all. This book was crazy…but in a good way.
Each morning, Aiden wakes up at Blackheath, an estate owned by the Hardcastle family. Every night, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered at 11:00 pm. Aiden’s job is to find out who killed her…but if he doesn’t, he wakes up and repeats the day in another guest’s body. He has eight days to figure out her murder and eight different bodies to inhabit. To make matters worse, there are others stuck at Blackheath like him who are searching for the murderer, but they are also coming after Aiden.
I knew going into this book it was a mystery, but even then I was totally twisted the first dozen chapters and had no clue what was going on. I think there were a few things that contributed to this confusion:
First, the book’s in first person point of view. This means we see the entire story from Aiden’s eyes but during the story he’s jumping his personality into another person’s body, with very limited memory of that person’s immediate life. This means until Aiden figures out what’s going on, you are just as in the dark as he is.
Secondly, the book isn’t linear. It will tell you when it moves on to a new day with a new body, but sometimes it will jump back into a previous body. That means you’re not meeting characters in chronological order, which makes it sometimes confusing.
Besides these challenges, the book grows on you. By the time Aiden realizes that he’s in a murder investigation, he’s able to adapt quickly. This book has a lot of classic mystery elements: red herrings, double-crossing, murders, hidden family secrets…you name it! It reminded me very much of Agatha Christie’s works, where there were so many different pieces to the puzzle, you won’t be able to figure it out until the big reveal.
Overall, it’s a well-done mystery novel, even with the shaky start.
**Thank you Net Galley and Sourcebooks for this free book in exchange for an honest review!**
**The book is out now (also under the title The 7 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle) so enjoy!**
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