The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton: A Review

“How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home?”
― Stuart Turton, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

First of all I have to say, the whole time I was reading The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle I was thinking, ‘Stuart Turton is so much smarter than me.’ In this novel, Turton surprised me again and again with the ways he was able to weave a very intricate and intelligent story line into compulsively readable fiction. I love books with interesting narrative structures and I’ve never really read a book like this before. I will try very hard not to reveal anything about the plot that you couldn’t glean from the dust jacket but this book is so page-turning that I just want to shove it into everyone’s hands and say: “read this next!” Turton is able to take genres that feel really familiar and combine them in ways that make his novel fresh and unique. There are big twists in the plot but they never feel gimmicky or unnecessary. There are a lot of lose threads in the story and when they are brought together at the end it just made me sit back and marvel at how Turton was able to do that.

So, no spoilers but how is this for an opening: you suddenly find yourself in the woods with no idea how you got there or who you are. The only thing you think you know for sure is that there are two other people in the forest – a woman named Anna and someone who is trying to kill her. You are terrified and lost. And then the murderer gives you the means to find your way out of the woods and back to the manor house where you are staying. That night, the daughter of the house, Evelyn Hardcastle, will be killed during a lavish party. You have to figure out who her killer is. And you will wake up every day and live the events leading up to Evelyn’s murder over and over until you know who did it.

What made The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle so interesting is that Turton moves it beyond a genre-bending murder mystery. As the main character, Aiden, is forced to live the same day again and again, the novel really makes the reader start to question the forces that shape our lives and actions: how much is down to our nature? Can we change or are we following prescribed paths laid out by fate? How far can we trust other people and to what extent should we rely only on ourselves?

I love when a novel can manage to feel suspenseful and smart all at once. Seven Deaths is certainly one I would recommend, especially if like me, you love mysteries and old manor houses and books that take you by surprise. Until next week, happy reading everybody!

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny: A Review

“Not everything needed to be brought into the light, he knew. Not every truth needed to be told. And he knew she was right. He’d seen their faces as she’d fled. She’d said too much. He didn’t understand it, couldn’t see it, but he knew something foul had just come to light, come to life.” – Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

When I referred to Penny’s novels as ‘cozy’ mysteries back in the April Line Up post, I didn’t realize that was an actual thing. Cozy mysteries are apparently mystery stories that are not too graphic or too dark, which is an apt description for this series. The main character is Inspector Gamache; head of the homicide team for the Surete du Quebec, Gamache is intelligent and a refined. The novels are set primarily in Quebec, usually alternating between Montreal and the tiny village of Three Pines. While Penny certainly creates intricate plots, her writing does not embrace many tropes of typical mystery series: there are lots of references to art and poetry and music in her books. The female characters are strong and savvy. But what I love most about Penny’s writing is the sense of atmosphere she is able to develop. There is a strong sense of place in her novels and she contextualizes the setting with smatterings of Quebec’s (and Canada’s) culture, history and politics without it overshadowing the story. These are the novels I come back to when I need a break and just want to settle in with characters who feel as familiar as friends.

A Rule Against Murder is set at a remote country manoir where Gamache and his wife are staying. The other guests are members of the Morrow family – wealthy, English and Québécois – all there for a reunion. The Morrows are a family fraught with malice and secrets and when one of them is murdered, it brings to the surface things that have been hidden for years. The murder and subsequent investigation play out in ways that keep you guessing. One of Penny’s strengths is her ability to create characters that have depth and she uses this depth to add the intrigue in the plot.

I think that her writing really takes off after this book. While this is a good novel, the ones that come later in the series are stronger, in my opinion. I particularly like the later ones set in the village of Three Pines. If you like mysteries and haven’t picked up one of her novels, her fifth, The Brutal Telling might be a good place to start.

If you are reading something you love this spring, drop me a line and let me know. I love hearing other people talk about books they are passionate about. Until next week, happy reading!

April Line Up

This month’s theme is, ‘can you keep a secret?’ Each of the novels for April center around secrets. One of them is a mystery in the conventional sense, but the rest are novels where secrets drive the story in other ways. There is something delicious about a good secret and as a reader, I find it so compelling to try to unravel them. I hope some of these secrets appeal to you and you find something in this month’s line up to read along with me.

April 6, 2019: Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I’ve never read any novels by Taylor Jenkins Reid and I wasn’t too sure about this one – it’s set in the 1970s and follows a rock band as they make music and go on tour. No one knows why the group split after their last show in Chicago in 1979 at the height of their popularity but the secret is revealed over the course of the novel. I was on the fence about reading this one, but a new friend gave it the thumbs up so I decided to put it on the list for this month and happily borrowed her copy.

April 13, 2019: A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny

Penny is a Canadian novelist and A Rule Against Murder is part of her Three Pines series (I think there are fourteen of them now). All of the novels are set in Quebec and I love them for the sense of atmosphere Penny creates and the cast of quirky characters that populate her fictional world of Three Pines. You don’t need to read the series in order, each mystery can stand alone although there are over-arching plots. In this one, family secrets lead to murder at a isolated Manior and Chief Inspector Gamache must solve the case.

April 20, 2019: The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick

I’m a sucker for a book about books, which is what first led me to pick up Patrick’s latest novel. If you are a book nerd like me, how is this for a story line? The main character is Martha Storm, an awkward but kindhearted librarian. One day, a mysterious book of fairy tales arrives on her doorstep and the dedication is written by her grandmother, Zelda, who died mysteriously years before. Martha comes to believe her grandmother may still be alive and starts to follow the clues that ultimately reveal family secrets.

April 27, 2019: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

At the end of the ball, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered. But it doesn’t look like a murder, so the murderer doesn’t get caught. Until Aiden, one of the guests at the party, can solve the murder the day will repeat itself, over and over again and Evelyn will be killed each night. I really like it when authors take a genre you think you know and push its boundaries. This is Turton’s debut and I am really excited to see how this story unfolds.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens: A Review

“The marsh did not confine them but defined them and, like any sacred ground, kept their secrets deep.” – Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

Sorry for the stock photo on this post, folks, but I already lent my copy of Where the Crawdads Sing away before I remembered to snap a picture for the blog. I guess it speaks to how good the novel is that I was handing it over to a friend before I even got my review done. The story opens with the discovery of the body of Chase Andrews, a local hero – handsome, star of his football team back in high school, heir to a properous family business – his death becomes the source of speculation and gossip. The circumstances of Chase’s death don’t add up, and quickly the sheriff starts to suspect foul play. The town’s eyes turn to Kya Clark, known by residents as the ‘Marsh Girl’. The narrative moves back and forth between the on-going police investigation into Chase’s death and Kya’s experiences growing up alone in the marsh.

Most of Where the Crawdads Sing is set in a coastal marsh in North Carolina in the 1960s where Kya makes her home. It is a story of isolation and loss, but also of redemption and hope. As a child, Kya is poor and ends up abandoned by her family. Having lost everyone she loves and terrified of ending up in foster care and taken from her beloved marsh, Kya fends for herself and shies away from the company of others. Living in her family’s shack on the edge of a lagoon, her experiences are largely coloured by loneliness and isolation as she struggles to survive. Her greatest desire is to connect to other people but her unconventional life and the prejudices of the town against the ‘marsh people’ make it seemingly impossible for her to develop relationships. Despite the adversity of her circumstances, in many ways Kya is able to triumph and seems on the verge of finally making a life for herself when Chase’s body was found.

While the framework of the novel seems to be a basic murder mystery in the beginning, this book is so much more. Owens writes poignently about the marsh that sustains Kya over the years and rather than just the setting, the marsh seems to permeate every aspect of the novel. I am not someone normally drawn to nature writing, but Owens’ depictions of the marsh are beautifully handled and evoke a deep sense of place and time. The novel centers around big themes like love, hope and betrayal without becoming sentimental or sacchrine. Owens grounds the reader so well in Kya’s world that you are pulling for her right from the beginning and the novel’s turns mean that the storyline continues to surprise.

I originally bought my copy of Where the Crawdads Sing months ago and then kind of relegated it to my To Read Pile because the blurb made it sound a bit trite. I am so glad that a recommendation encouraged me to bump it up on my reading list because I thouroughly enjoyed it. It’s a really interesting exploration of human nature in all its cruelty and kindness but mostly, I think it’s Owens love letter to the landscape in which the book is set. If you read Where the Crawdads Sing, let me know what you thought. Also, if you, like me, weren’t one hundred percent sure what a crawdad is, they’re crayfish (and they don’t really sing, but they do kind of make a clicking sound). Thanks, Google.

Melmoth by Sarah Perry: A Review

“No librarians yet at their post, the ranks of desks miserably empty, like sockets from which teeth had been pulled.” – Sarah Perry, Melmoth

Well everyone, it finally happened. I wondered when I started this little project when I would start a book I couldn’t finish. This was the one. I was so excited to read Melmoth. The reviews were outstanding and I loved the idea behind the story but readers, I have to be honest, I could not get through this book. I debated making myself finish it since I chose it for the blog, but years ago a wise librarian convinced me that life is too short to make yourself finish reading books you don’t like. So I didn’t. Besides, I decided that explaining why I couldn’t get through it is a review of a sort, so here were go:

Keeping in mind I only made it as far as page 80, I have to say I had a really hard time connecting to this novel. The narrative style is overly wordy in a way that seems like Perry is trying to mimic earlier Gothic writers (think Poe: words, words, words) but to me it felt artificial. The novel is set in modern times so at best it was unnecessary but at worst it felt like Perry was trying too hard to evoke Gothic tropes. The characters were really flat. They seldom express much emotion and when they do, they are kind of awful – one of the characters longs to get away from his wife because she has been paralyzed by a stroke and looking after her depresses him; another rejects other children who try to befriend him because they are nice. I am not kidding. I have read books before where the characters are purposefully unlikable but these ones were also oddly devoid of interesting traits. Even in their pettiness or jealousy or cruelty, they failed to elicit enough of a reaction for me to even care if Melmoth the Witness came and devoured them all in the end (or whatever it is Melmoth does, I guess I’ll never know). I couldn’t like them enough to worry for them or hate them enough to root for their destruction. Characters the reader doesn’t care about is never a good sign.

Before giving up entirely, I went back and read some reviews. I thought there had to be something I was missing. Certainly in the past, I have had to take a couple of running starts at a book before I really got into it and I was hoping the reviews would spur me into action. But as a I scrolled down past all the 5 star reviews that called Perry’s work “sublime” or “masterful”, I found my people. The 1 star reviews that said what I was thinking. The characters in this book are not people I would ever want to sit next to at a dinner party. The writing, while beautiful in places is also really boring at times. And according to the intrepid reviewers who made it all the way to the end, that doesn’t change. There was one common descriptor: depressing.

And with that, suspicions confirmed, I firmly shut the book. There are too many other books I want to read.

Have you ever given up on a book or do you finish whatever you start? I know readers tend to fall into one category or the other so I would love to hear from you. And if you read and loved (or hated) Melmoth, I would be interested to hear that too. Until next time, happy reading!

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: A Review

“Later – and for the rest of his life – James will struggle to piece words to this feeling, and he will never quite manage to say, even to himself, what he really means. At this moment he can think only one thing: how was it possible, he wonders, to have been so wrong.” – Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

In this novel, Celeste Ng explores what happens to a family when one of the children, Lydia, dies. The circumstances of Lydia’s death are unclear – she left the house in the middle of the night, and later she was found, drowned in the local lake. The family struggles to come to terms with her death – was it murder? An accident? Suicide? And in seeking the answers, they begin to tear apart their bonds as a family. The parents, Marilyn and James Lee, and Lydia’s two remaining siblings, Nath and Hannah, are left protecting their secrets – and each other’s – as they struggle with their grief.

Ng excels at writing work that is both page-turning and deeply sympathetic to her characters. The tension created by Lydia’s death and the resulting reactions of her family developed so much tension that my chest actually felt tight as I read this book. It was only near the end, when Ng reveals the truth about what actually happened to Lydia that I felt like I was able to breathe again. Her writing evokes the vulnerability, loss and pain of her characters so realistically that at times I found it hard to keep reading. Marilyn and James, both thwarted in their own ambitions through circumstance, seek to realize their dreams through their children. The ambitions the Lees have – especially for Nath and Lydia, the two oldest – come from a place of love and the desire to create a better life for them, but result in both children hiding their true selves in an attempt to match themselves to the visions their parents have of them. Only Hannah, the youngest and often ignored child, notices all the small things the others miss: a significant look, a forgotten item, the sound of the front door opening and closing in the middle of the night.

The novel is an exploration of the ways in which families can both save and surrender us. They are the keepers of the deepest secrets, creators of the sharpest cuts. The Lee family clearly loves each other and this makes the story even more painful as the loss of Lydia drives them apart. Ng mingles perception, memory and truth to examine how complicated it is to truly see another, even those we think we know the best.

I have to say between this book and Little Fires Everywhere, any new novels by Celeste Ng will likely go straight to the top of my TRP. Have you read Everything I Never Told You? Drop me a line and let me know what you think. Until next time, happy reading!

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: A Review

“One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules… was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure what side of the line you stood on.” – Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

I really, really liked this book. Set in the community of Shaker Heights, Little Fires Everywhere follows the story of two families: the Richardsons – a wealthy family with four teenaged children and their tenant, Mia Warren and her daughter, Pearl. Shaker Heights is a planned community where everything from the layout of the streets to the colours of the houses is carefully designed. The families of Shaker are rich, their children go on to prestigious universities, they give to the right charities, they help those in need. They follow the rules. They do what is right. Nobody embodies Shaker more than Elena Richardson, who was raised in the community and returned there to raise her own family. When Mia moves to Shaker, Elena sees the artist and her shy daughter as an opportunity to help someone deserving. Very quickly the two families become entwined via the children; Pearl becomes a fixture in the Richardson home while Izzy, Elena’s challenging youngest child, comes to idolize Mia. When a white couple in Shaker attempts to adopt a Chinese-American baby who was abandoned by her mother, a custody battle ensues that divides the community, and puts Elena and Mia on opposite sides.

One of the things I most enjoyed about this book was how unexpected so much of it was. As the novel progresses, secrets are revealed that threaten to pull both families apart. The narrative moves between Elena, Mia and each of the five children. Ng’s writing is like a slow burn. I found myself drawn in almost without noticing, and then I couldn’t stop reading. Ng reveals the complexities of family, especially the relationships between mothers and their children. She also examines what it means to follow the rules, and what it means to break them. Both Elena and Mia are strong characters with faith that their actions are the right ones and this sets them on a path that will eventually result in heartbreak for both of them. I think the reason the novel works so well is because Ng is careful not to create heroes or villains. Each character’s choices and feeling are understandable given their circumstances and this makes the events that unfold – some of them shocking – feel inevitable. Ng’s writing creates an immersive world in the suburbs of Cleveland that feels both familiar and alien as she pushes the readers’ boundaries about who is right and who is wrong in the conflicts she creates.

If you are looking for a book to read in the new year, you should pick up Little Fires Everywhere. I would really love to hear what you think about it and if you loved it as much as I did! Until next time, happy reading!

The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley: A Review

“‘I’m just a girl,’ I said, hating myself even as I said it. ‘Ever so many girls have mousy hair. I’m just one of the mice.'” – Alan Bradley, The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place

Apologies, dear readers! I’m afraid the holidays have me way behind schedule posting my December blogs. I will do my best to have everything back on track for you before the new year. I will post on each of the Jolabokaflod books in the coming days, and hopefully you will have the chance to put your feet up and do some reading too.

If you have never read on of Alan Bradley’s “Flavia de Luce” mysteries, I would recommend starting with the first book in the series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Bradley is Canadian but the novels are set in the English countryside in the early 1950s. Throughout the series, Bradley is able to play on conventional British murder mysteries but his choice of detective (an eleven-year-old girl with braids, knee socks, and a passion for chemistry) makes them stand out. The main character, Flavia, is a refreshing change as a sleuth; instead of a hardbitten former police officer with a drinking problem and an ex-wife, picture Sherlock Holmes meets Wednesday Addams and you will have an idea. Flavia is brilliant and maybe just slightly intrigued by all things death. Bradley infuses his novels with dark humour as Flavia judges (and often finds lacking) the wit of the adults around her.

If you have read other novels from this series, then this one won’t disappoint. On a boating afternoon with her sisters and their loyal servant, Dogger, Flavia discovers the corpse of a young actor drowned in the river. This unexpected turn of events forces the group to stay in the local village while Flavia, often slowed by the efforts of the police investigation, attempts to solve the mystery of the actor’s death. Often frustrated by being the target of condescension and suspicion, Flavia never doubts her own intellect and flouts authority and rules in order to be the one to solve the case. True to his style, Bradley colours the novel with local eccentrics and looming dangers that threaten Flavia as she comes to close to revealing the truth. Set against the back story of the family’s recent loss of their father, the mystery can also be read as Flavia’s attempt to find order and predictability in the chaos their lives have been thrown into.

I can’t help but be charmed by these novels every time I pick one up. They are both familiar and unexpected at once. Bradley’s wry humour is contrasted by surprising moments of vulnerability as Flavia tries to overcome the grief and worry her father’s death has left behind by portraying herself as a cool and saavy detective. She is one of my absolute favourite fictional people and if you are looking for a good mystery over the holidays, one of Bradley’s novels would be worth picking up.

Bonus Book: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

This novel is by turns beautiful and disturbing. The narrative is set as a story-within-a-story as Margaret Lea, the main character, is asked to write the biography of Vida Winter, a bestselling author. Winter is notorious for making up conflicting accounts of her past to interviewers but her life is revealed through her interviews with Margaret, and some detective work Margaret does to ensure that she too, is not falling victim to Winter’s stories.

The book is a nod to the works of writers like the Bronte sisters and Victorian Gothic novels. There is a reclusive family, secrets, a sprawling country estate, twins who are doomed to be driven apart and even a few mad women for good measure (although these ones are not locked up in the attic). As Margaret untangles the truth of Winter’s past, she also makes peace with her own. Despite relying on classic elements of mystery and horror stories, Setterfield’s writing is unique and each piece of the past that is revealed keeps the reader guessing what will come next.

As a mystery novel, The Thirteenth Tale stands on its own but I think it really captured me because it is also a love letter to stories. Setterfield is a beautiful writer and much of the novel revolves around story – how her characters use it to create, reinvent, comfort and deceive:

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”

I have recommended The Thirteenth Tale to a lot of people over the years. There is a kind of terrible beauty to the novel that left me thinking about it long after I had finished it. I hope it can make its way into your “To Read Pile” too.

Fear by Dirk Kurbjuweit: A Review

“We always live at least two lives, especially after a big decision: The life we decided on and the life we decided against. In our minds we let that other life play out, comparing it with our actual situation.” – Dirk Kurbjuweit, Fear.

Happy weekend everybody! This week’s book was an interesting one. Fear is a German novel that poses the question: how far would you go if you were afraid for your family? Randolf Tiefenthaler, the narrator, is a relatively successful architect in Berlin. He has an intelligent and entertaining wife, Rebecca, two children and lives in a nice ground-floor flat. He thinks of himself as a law-abiding citizen, someone who values law over disorder, intellect over action, words over force: a modern man.

The novel unfolds as Randolf records the events that led up to his father being found guilty of manslaughter in the death of Dieter Tiberius. A man who grew up in the foster system and is essentially a shut-in, Tiberius lived in the flat below the Tiefenthalers and became obsessed with Rebecca. He writes letters and poems that both threaten and disgust the Tiefenthalers; he accuses them of abusing the children, he calls the police on them repeatedly. He watches Randolf’s children when they play outside on their trampoline. He peers in their windows at night. The Tiefenthalers become increasingly afraid for themselves and their children. What if Tiberius does something to the children? What if the police believe his stories? The problem is, despite terrorizing the family, Tiberius has not broken any laws – the lawyers, the police, and their landlord claim that their hands are tied. Until Tiberius breaks the law, there is no one who can help the Tiefenthalers.

The situation forces Randolf to reevaluate himself and his life. He had long written off his father and brother (neither of whom are opposed to violence) as being lesser. As Tiberius continues to harass the family, Randolf questions himself as a father, a husband and ultimately a man. As a young person he rejected his father’s enthusiasm for guns and his brother’s preference for solving problems with his fists. He put his faith in law and logic. But then the law fails. Not knowing what else to do, Randolf turns to his father, knowing what he is asking him to do. When the story begins, Tiberius is dead and Randolf’s father is serving a jail sentence for his killing.

The author forces the reader to confront a lot of questions about morality throughout the novel. Dieter Tiberius is the obvious villain but Randolf and Rebecca are flawed as well, they have characteristics that are not very appealing: Randolf lies to his wife and shirks his family responsibilities, Rebecca throws screaming fits. Their marriage is falling apart. And then Tiberius comes into their lives and somehow they become better people – and worse – because of their experiences with him. They pull together as a family in a way that was unlikely before the harassment began: and then the characters must ask themselves, what does it mean if the good you experience in your life is a direct consequence of the evil? How far would you go to protect that goodness?

I think this novel is really much more intellectual that the genre would lead readers to expect. It is a thriller but the fear isn’t so much driven from the plot, but from the kinds of questions it poses: what would you do if your spouse was threatened? Your children? What kind of person does it make you if you couldn’t make yourself do what it took to protect them? Dieter Tiberius is like a nightmare figure – the threat he poses is the fear he creates in the characters’ minds. For me, this was a much more satisfying book than last week’s in a dark, dark wood. The way the narrative is structured make it feel very real, like this was something that could happen to anyone at any time. That is what makes it so compelling as a reader because as Randolf questions his decisions and tries to make sense of what happened, the reader can’t help but ask themselves the same questions.

If you read Fear, drop me a note and let me know what you think. Until next week, happy reading!