The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (Sourcebooks Landmark, 2018)

★☆☆☆☆

Locked-room Quantum Leap murder mystery. A man entering Blackheath Manor with no memories of his previous self must navigate the same day through the perspectives of eight different guests to solve the crime.

It’s an awful experience to finish a 400+ page book and feel almost zero connection to anything that happened in it. If it were only for the banal reveals, general lack of character interiority, and taped-on frame story, my review might hover around 1.5-2 stars. But what cements the one star for me is the heavy bioessentialism throughout and specific distasteful choices around fatphobia and rapeyness. So here I go, writing my first review in five months (since my last one-star review).