Book Summary: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.
Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ‘80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.
“You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until somewhat stands behind you and says, “It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.”
Book Review: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Okay, I’ll admit it—when I first picked up Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, I was expecting an ultra-glitzy, delightfully trashy romp through the scandalous romantic entanglements of a vintage Hollywood starlet. You know, the literary equivalent of tucking into a pint of fabulously lurid, tell-all celebrity memoir ice cream?
What I wasn’t quite prepared for was how surprisingly stark and thought-provoking the novel’s deeper thematic substance would prove to be once you peeled away its seductively soapy outer layers. Because while The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo most certainly delivers all the sparkling thrills of a bonafide Old Hollywood behind-the-scenes exposé, it’s also a richly layered excavation of human identity, the insidious nature of prejudice, and the intricate web of performance surrounding public versus private selfhood.
Right from those tantalizing opening pages where reclusive screen icon Evelyn Hugo hijacks an unsuspecting young writer to narrate her sordid life story, you know you’re in for one juicy, meticulously constructed character study. Reid seamlessly integrates the lush period detailing and gorgeous vintage couture you’d expect from a no-holds-barred look at Hollywood’s golden age. Yet she also instills an undercurrent of bone-deep melancholy beneath all that opulence that had me utterly transfixed.
“Sometimes reality comes crashing down on you. Other times reality simply waits, patiently, for you to run out of the energy it takes to deny it.”
As Evelyn whisks us through the dizzying highs and lows of her improbable rise to stardom—the loveless Hitchcockian arrangement that kickstarted her career, the string of marriages both passionate and pragmatic that fueled her ascent, the path of shocking personal betrayals that pushed her into a singular force of survival against all odds—what emerges is so much richer than your standard “what I had to do to make it in this town” confessional.
With astute psychological insight and exquisite turns of phrase, Reid peels away Evelyn’s layers of self-mythologizing to expose the harsh toll of denying one’s authentic self in service of others’ expectations. She deftly illustrates how this woman’s entire existence effectively became an intricate, high-wire act of secret-keeping and code-switching in pursuit of an identity she could embrace openly and without fear.
Whether it’s the internalized stigma surrounding Evelyn’s bisexuality in the ruthlessly image-conscious Hollywood machine or the prejudices and personal demons she wrestled with due to her ethnically ambiguous heritage, Reid carves out such an exquisitely layered inner life for her protagonist. One where even the loftiest successes and material indulgences feel gilded with equal parts triumph and soul-deep fatigue over the lifetime of calculated deceptions required to achieve them.
“When you’re given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn’t give things, you take things.”
And while the central mystery surrounding Evelyn’s greatest personal heartbreak and the motives behind her chillingly pragmatic final marriage does provide a wonderfully soapy narrative engine, the chief pleasure comes from Reid’s ability to constantly upend expectations with empathetic nuance.
Just when you think you’ve got Evelyn’s various spouses and ill-fated lovers pegged as mere archetypes, the author will peel away new layers of poignancy to reveal their fragile humanities. No one is mere scenery in Reid’s richly inhabited Hollywood cosmology.
Even side characters who could have merely been one-note narrative devices end up feeling like intricate pieces in Evelyn’s sprawling identity mosaic. Every single player and fatefully tangled relationship accrues deeper dimensions as Reid masterfully connects the dots between individual agency, the oppressive politics of image-making, and the insidious cultural dynamics continuously suppressing autonomy.
The resulting resonance is nothing short of thrilling—a sumptuous, probing character portrait that somehow manages to feel both a raucously juicy dive into vintage Hollywood excess and a radically insightful commentary on society’s eternally damning insistence on compulsory normalcy. One chapter, you’ll be devouring exorbitantly raunchy, rapturous romantic scenarios with gleeful delight. The next, you’ll be pondering the quiet existential sorrow of enduring life on the fringes of mainstream acceptance.
It’s a masterful high-wire act of narrative duality that Reid handles with truly astounding grace—so much so that I found myself addictively inhaling massive chunks of the book in single sittings, desperate to keep unraveling Evelyn’s tangled web of personae. Hours and chapters would dissolve away as I willingly immersed myself in her all-too-relatable plight of struggling to reconcile public and private selfhood.
“No one is just a victim or a victor. Everyone is somewhere in between. People who go around casting themselves as one or the other are not only kidding themselves, but they’re also painfully unoriginal.”
So while The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo may lure you in with the promise of a sumptuous, no-holds-barred look at Hollywood’s most glamorously sordid relationship dramas, be prepared to also confront some surprisingly rich existential mediations on identity, belonging, and the quiet casualties of society’s oppressive standards for acceptable selfhood.
It’s a decadently delicious yet ultimately quite nourishing literary feast that somehow accomplishes the impressive feat of feeling like a depth-charge explosion of subversive empathy wrapped in the glossy sheen of a vintage tabloid gatefold. Part spiritual character study, part rapturously soapy indulgence, Reid’s utterly captivating novel masterfully earns its place as an instant modern classic with all the makings of an enduring cult phenomenon.
So grab some perfectly chilled white wine, dim the lights to an appropriately moody hue, and prepare to blissfully surrender yourself to the lushly rendered, thoughtfully shaded romantic thrills of Old Hollywood’s most tantalizing riddle wrapped in faded glamour. Only this time, you’ll emerge all the wiser about life’s quieter performance anxieties lurking underneath those seductively brilliant veneers.
