The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

It's like Clue but with Multiple Personality Disorder.

This book was.... interesting. I am glad I read it, but I am not sure if I would actively recommend it to others.

I think my main issue was that it went on too long for me personally. I felt like we could have done a heavy edit round and still not lot the essence of the story - in fact, I think we would have gained more from this. I kept getting confused and a little bored throughout the story. Not because the story was uninteresting, but because we had way too much detail, and I can only read the same scene so many times before it gets to be overkill. I think we could have experienced it with less detail each time and it would have kept my interest longer.

The other issue I have is that the women in the story are either described as meek, petite, and good to their men, OR they are super bad people. We did not get an intelligent neutral woman, and none of the hosts were women. I personally felt this took away from the story for me - and maybe this means I am not the right audience for the book.

Finally, I did not like the ending. Personal preference, but it wasn't for me.

NOW, there was plenty of things that were for me.

I liked the hosts and how he navigated the story with them - it was very interesting to see how your mind and physical state affect the outcome so much. I enjoyed the mystery aspect and felt that the plot was awesome. I liked the plague doctor as a character, and I enjoyed how the events unfolded.

Overall, it was a good book, it just went into too much unimportant detail for me, and I wish it ended differently.

I do have a few theories about the prison though - My favorite coming out of my book club discussion this past month. We thought it might represent purgatory - and now that they are 'out' they get to suffer through what comes next. We also considered it to be a simulation style prison, which was interesting!