Book Review: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a novel written by Taylor Jenkins Reid. It belongs to the Historical Fiction genre, with romance and LGBT as subgenres. This story essentially has two stories intertwined. We first meet Monique Grant, a new journalist living in New York. We quickly learn that Monique is having troubles with her marriage – her husband left her behind when he moved across the country to accept a promotion in California. Monique wanted to stay in New York and was determined to advance her career. Next we meet Evelyn Hugo, an iconic Hollywood movie star from the 1960s who, believe it or not, had seven different husbands over her lifetime. It seems that her fans are just dying to know why she got married so many times, and why her marriages never seemed to work out. Everyone, including us, finally find out. At the age of 79, Evelyn has hired Monique to write and publish her life story.

Monique spends days interviewing Evelyn and listening to her life story from start to finish. All the while, she can’t help but wonder why on earth such an iconic superstar would choose her (a new and unknown journalist) to write her biography. As I read Evelyn's life story, I began to fall in love with her character. She explains how she got to Los Angeles, all the tough choices she had to make to push her career forward, details about all seven of her marriages, and even a secret lover. After I fell in love with Evelyn and the empire she created for herself, I found out exactly why she chose Monique to write her story. The shocking twist left me wondering if I really liked Evelyn after all. I love when a novel can invoke real emotions from me, such as excitement, joy, anger, sadness, and heartbreak – and this book caused all of those.

This book was a very quick read for me. It was written in a way that makes you want to keep going, not because it’s suspenseful, but just to hear Evelyn’s whole life story. Even though Evelyn Hugo is a fictional character, I was wanting to know every little detail about her life. This novel is 389 pages and has a 4.48 star (out of 5) review on goodreads.com. If you want to read more reviews on goodreads, click here. I highly recommend this novel to anyone because it had me thinking about the story and the characters even after I was done, and I think it would appeal to a wide range of people. Check it out!