An easy breezy clean mystery. Jenna's high profile Hollywood breakup has sent her back home to small town USA. Living in her Gram's house & helping her mom in the thrift store is a step down from her stylist to the stars job. A swarmy man in the thrift shop puts the moves on her and a very public shouting match ensues and the man is later found dead. As a prime suspect in the murder Jenna tries to prove her innocence with town folk helping her. Cooper, the foxy chief of police and Matt, her equally attractive neighbor are in competition for her affections while trying to find the murderer and Jenna's mom and the rest of the town have bets going with who she will end up dating. A fun clean read ( )

What an original story idea. As many have said, a cross between an Agatha Christie mystery and the movie Groundhog Day. I don’t usually give spoilers in my reviews, and I won’t in this one either, but I feel like it’s hard to talk about a lot of things without giving plot points and twists away, so this might be a really short review.
First of all, if you enjoy mysteries, just go read it.
I was a bit concerned when I saw the invitation at the beginning of the book and all the names, but The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was written so well, I never became confused. This also takes place in the era around Downton Abbey, and while you get some of that era, if you’re not a huge fan (but isn’t everyone?!?) I think you’ll still enjoy this book because it’s not really in your face. In fact, after a bit, I stopped even thinking about what time it was set in.
I really enjoyed how something would show up in one character’s story and then two or three characters later you would see why it had happened. You continued to get mini mysteries throughout the larger mystery. Also, as Aiden became more characters, those character’s traits would stay with him. I thought Stuart Turton did a fabulous job writing how difficult these characteristics could be for Aiden.
The big reveal that is done isn’t quite up to Agatha Christie’s standards, but I still didn’t see it coming. And besides all the small mysteries and the large mystery, you also get ethics and morals incorporated into the story. You can either dwell on these and get your head spinning or you can just read it as a fun mystery.
Even though this came out in 2018 and it’s only January, I could see The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle being on my top 10 books of 2020! ( )