I am so annoyed at this book.
First of all it was way too long. It should have been edited down, not just for length but also several times there was language so floral that it took me completely out of the mystery.
I mean stuff like this:
“Thankfully, the leaves and twigs are so demoralized by the earlier rain they don’t have the heart to cry out beneath my feet.”
Shut up. Just say what you mean. Urh. And every.single.character was a man.
And then the author at the end of it writes a cute little ditty thanking his old neighbour for buying him agatha christie novels and I’m like dude, I was all set for DESTROYING your man-filled book. But dammit you’re so likable. Like just. Fuck off.
Anyways. Here’s the teaser to the book:
Sebastian Bell wakes up one morning in the forest with mysterious cuts on his arm just in time to see a woman being murdered. A stranger presses a compass into his hands and tells him East. Bell arrives at a dark house where something sinister is about to happen and it’s his job to stop it.
Too little information and you’re blind, too much and you’re blinded.
This is the unspoilery blurb to the book and I’d recommend reading it with just that knowledge. What actually happens is way more bonkers. It’s an Agatha Christie closed house murder investigation with some body-snatching and a paranormal man in a bird costume. Basically a man named Aiden Bishop is at this place and he has to solve the murder in 8 days in order to go home. But the catch is that every day he wakes up in a different body. This leads to some really cool issues where he’s struggling against the personality of his host as he’s trying to solve the murder. I have two gripes here: the book took way too long to get off ground as Aiden Bishop is first in a coward’s body and then in the next body he tries to escape. He doesn’t actually try to solve the mystery until the the last three bodies.
My second gripe is much more serious: every single one of the bodies he inhabits are men. The two main antagonists are men. He’s there to rescue a woman and then meets Anna and decides to sort of do a two-for-one and save two women even though she is much smarter and hardworking than he is. There is some real male-saviour shit that just permeates the book. When he talks to Anna or Evelyn I often found myself wanting to learn more about these characters instead. Especially because the reason Aiden Bishop is even in the world in the first place is a male-revenge fantasy that left me with very little sympathy for him.
But it’s a fun read. The math kinda checks out if you don’t examine the premise/world too closely and the ending to the mystery is satisfying. I just wish women would’ve been allowed some talking-time. But it’s a well-crafted story with an interesting world. It pulls you in and I was sad to leave it.
