The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Here’s another one. Another book with such a great premise that you wished you’d thought of it yourself. It’s kind of like Groundhog Day meets Quantum Leap meets Freaky Friday meets Miss Marple. What a film that would be. And what a book this is. I read somewhere that it took Stuart Turton three months to plan out the book on a huge spreadsheet where he detailed every two minutes of every character’s day and their location in the house at each point and when you read the book you can easily understand why he needed to do this.

This is literally a book to get lost in; a book that needs 100% of your attention every time you pick it up as the term ‘labyrinthine plotting’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. The real genius, however, is that Mr. Turton pulls it off with aplomb. Absolutely perfect reading escapism.