“How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home?”

I got sucked in by the hype on this one. Everyone was reading it. I put it on hold at the library and it took over three months for it to be available. And, really, the blurb really did make it sound fascinating. So it’s not like it took a lot of convincing to get me to add it to my TBR, but for sure the hype made me move it up the list.

This novel is basically a murder mystery, but with a crazy twist. Aiden Bishop wakes up at Blackheath Manor every morning in a different body. And every day at 11pm, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered. Somehow, Aiden must solve the mystery of her death in order to escape the loop. But having a different body every day is making things hard, especially because some are much more useful than others.

This book is a really entertaining Dr. Who/Clue/Agatha Christie mash-up. There were so many parts of it that I absolutely enjoyed. Each of the characters Aiden inhabits are all wonderfully/horribly unlikable (and in some cases, downright icky) in their own ways. But mixing their personalities with Aiden’s own was a really unique way to parse out the unlikable from the usable/beneficial/not-so-bad and was actually a fascinating psychological exploration in its own right. The details of the story, as they must be in order to make a plot as complex as this work (think how many plot holes there usually are in time travel novels and you’ll have an idea what all Turton had to juggle here), were just phenomenal. The little clues and insights that pop up throughout each different “host’s” part of the story, and how they come back to play a role in all the other host’s perspectives, was incredibly intricate and impressively executed. I also felt like the general “whodunnit” part was well developed, with all the twists and turns you could possibly want out of a murder mystery. I thought a couple times I guessed things (and then it seemed like I had because Aiden reached the same conclusion) and then another dramatic change would happen and then we’d all be back at square one. This was made more complicated by the fact that sometimes we were actually right, but then one of Aiden’s hosts was able to change the flow of the day and things partially reset. It really was an engrossing plot.

There were, however, a few things I was less enamored of. This part may contain some small spoilers, but really vague ones and nothing that gives away any details of the murder mystery itself. Just be cautious as you read this paragraph. Basically, the entire “mental orison” part of the book felt distant to me. Anna was supposed to be some kind of terrible, awful, person in real life, but that reveal was so fast you could miss it if you blink. In fact, I read it twice just to be sure that isn’t what happened to me. Her past was described so quickly and vaguely that I just really didn’t feel it, especially since, in the context of what we were reading, she was essentially an unknown. Aiden’s knowledge of/relationship with her changed daily, based on his host body, and his mysterious knowledgeable contact, the “Plague Doctor,” gave lots of mixed messages about her than changed based on the day and also seem not to be related to anything Aiden was actually experiencing (at least in the present cycle that he was in that we were experiencing with him). Honestly, I just wasn’t emotionally invested in her past or her transition into somehow becoming a better person because it was all kind of background to the murder mystery and not given enough page time to develop into something that seemed real. I kind of felt the same about Aiden’s past, and what we learn about his connection to Anna, as well as most of the “outsider” characters, like the murderous footman – I just couldn’t get invested. I loved the murder and mystery part of the story and while I appreciate the attempt to explain what is, admittedly, a crazy situation that does need explaining, the depth of the sci-fi/futuristic side of things was just really underdeveloped compared to the rest of the story. I feel like too much was tried there without enough time/space to truly delve into it. I just would have appreciated a less complex, or more thoroughly developed, explanation. And that is a bit weird for me, since I do love sci-fi, and truly the concept of mental prisons is fascinating. It may have been better if we had multiple perspectives, and got to “know” what the Plague Doctor knew from inside his own mind, because that would have provided space for more details. But, since Aiden’s perspective(s) were the only ones we got, it was too much for this single novel. I think I just wish it was either addressed better or not included at all.

Overall, this was a super entertaining book. I was really into the mystery part and loved the concept of Aiden being in different hosts, with different knowledge and skills, and trying to piece together the story in that scattered way. It was such a creative framework and the clues and twists were masterfully carried out. If that’s all it was, this book was get a much higher recommendation for me. But Aiden and Anna’s backgrounds, and the distance I felt from the entire part of the story regarding why they were in this loop in the first place, really bummed me out. It’s like having to review and recommend two entirely different novels. So, I’m splitting the difference and going right down the middle. I can see why everyone loved it, and while it was a solid and diverting book, I just can’t get on the hype train for it.