"Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day...quite unlike anything I've ever read, and altogether triumphant."—A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Woman in the Window The Rules of Blackheath Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11 ...

Boy was this a contentious NUBClub. To begin with, everyone agreed that the end of the book was stupid. There was an interesting Quantum Leap style premise, but the author blows it at the end with faulty explanations and terrible choices. Why didn't we have ANY track laying about who the protagonist was, or what landed Anna in this time loop? How is it, exactly, that the plague doctors don't know the solution to murder they run and have seen thousands of times? Beyond that, we were split based on our opinion of the core writing. Defenders of the book argued that the author's exploration of the different bodies (e.g. overweight, elderly. etc.) and how that was a symbol of how mutable personality is by circumstance were profound and interesting directions. Detractors disagreed, finding the explorations of other people shallow and lazy, and missing the main point of delving into the actual justifications and mindset of the darker roles. And then there was the language. A major disagreement broke out around whether the core writing was good. Quotes were thrown -- "it's like I've been asked to dig a hole with a shovel made of sparrows," "Perhaps he's wary of being hit by the train Daniel appears to be waiting for." -- that we will leave the reader to determine the quality of, because some of us found them great and some found them nauseating. Overall, I can't say anyone loved this book, but we were left torn between finding it an interesting piece of genre fictions and thinking it was one of the worst things that NUBClub has ever read.