Book Review: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

---  --- I’ll be honest—what first drew me to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo wasn’t the title alone, though it was intriguing enough to make me pause. It was the whispers I kept hearing in book circles. Readers gushed about its glamour, its secrets, and its heartbreak. Some said it shattered them. Others claimed it changed how they saw fame, womanhood, and love. I was skeptical. Was it just another hyped-up historical fiction about a beautiful woman and her string of failed marriages? I cracked it open expecting something spicy and scandalous. I didn’t expect to be emotionally gutted, healed, and awakened. This novel is not a story of seven husbands. Not really. It is the story of one woman, fierce, flawed, unforgettable Evelyn Hugo, and the love of her life. It is about stories that we either tell and those that we keep secret. It is about women who dare to live, and not just to survive, in a world that continues, despite the protests of women, to shrink them. Evelyn Hugo is a fictionalized individual of the golden era of Hollywood-Marilyn Monroe on steroids with the business acuity of Joan Crawford, and the sex appeal of Elizabeth Taylor. Nearing the end of her life, many years after her heyday, she contacts a young, unknown journalist, Monique Grant, and offers her the exclusive of a lifetime; to be able to share her real life story to her. Why Monique, though? This becomes the specter of a question that hangs over the story. When Evelyn tells her story of how she made her way out of poverty in Hell's Kitchen to the glittering heights of Hollywood stardom, she strips away her image in layers. Seven husbands there were. She used them--yes, with cruelty, with tenderness, and with strategy. Her story is more of a confession than a tell-all story. A reclamation. A love letter. And at the end, you can see that Evelyn was not out to scandalize the world--she was just now prepared to speak the truth. ---  --- Taylor Jenkins Reid is so intoxicatingly detailed that I was convinced I had traveled through time and into a smoke-filled dressing room and was bathed in vanity lights and secrets. The 50s to the 80s are brought to life- its glamor, its racism, its sexism and its unyielding domination over the female bodies and identities. Evelyn is taught very young that beauty is money. She is a weapon with her curves. She sells her sexuality. And she uses all of it to climb. However, I do not think she is a victim. Evelyn Hugo does not want you to pity her. She is recounting what she did and she is not sorry about it. She takes all the sins, all the decisions. That was what caused me to fall in love with her. She was not a woman who followed the rules. She is the one who rewrote them. This is where the unforgettable part of this book comes in. The actual plot does not deal with the husbands--it deals with Celia St. James. Celia, who is the love of Evelyn, is an actress, a woman whom Evelyn loved with ferociousness and fear. But it is a period when being out as queer may end your career, and your life, so Evelyn conceals it. She repeatedly prefers to be safe, famous, or in control instead of being in love. And the pain of those decisions is too much. They are tender and explosive in their relationship. You see them love and break up and love and break up and each time it hurts. Celia desires a soft, honest and open love. Evelyn would like to have a safe one. Their conflict, the extent to which they love and the frequency with which they hurt each other is palpable and exposed. This is the part that the book gutted. I was not reading a romance. I was watching two female people who attempted to live in a world, where their love is not permitted. I was annoyed with the choices made by Evelyn. But how should I condemn her? This is what she had to do in order to survive. She was a woman who was punished by society because she was ambitious and killed because she loved a wrong man. There were costs involved in every decision. ---  --- This book made me reflect deeply on how women, especially women of color, queer women, or those born in poverty, have always had to fight harder, smile brighter, and hide more of themselves to be seen, to succeed, to be safe. Evelyn Hugo, a Cuban-American woman passing as white, embodies every bit of that struggle. It made me question: how many Eveyln Hugos have lived and died, their truths buried in silence? I cried, not just because of what happened between Evelyn and Celia, but because I saw parts of myself my regrets, my pride, my fears in Evelyn’s brutal honesty. We all craft stories about who we are, especially for the world. But how many of us ever tell the full, messy, beautiful truth? The young journalist, Monique, appears as a mere side character at the beginning of the story, but she has her own tale as well. The reason why Evelyn picks her is very specific and when it beats like a lightning bolt it is like a bolt out of the blue. Monique also finds out more than the secrets of Evelyn, she finds out about herself, her voice and her value. And in one sense we do, and in many ways too. Taylor Jenkins Reid did more than just write a novel. She provided us with a legend. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is an arousing, tragic, and vengeful feminist. It is not only about being famous, it is about who you are, who you love, who you lose, how you manage to stay alive and what you leave behind. Evelyn is not real but she is more real than most of the people you encounter. This is the book to read when you want to disappear into a book and come out a different person. When it comes to a story that will make you fall in love, yell at the pages and sob in your sleep at 3 a.m.--this is it. I put the last chapter down and sat dumbfounded. Not because I did not see the twist coming, but because Evelyn Hugo gave me what I rarely get: a story that is not afraid to be weak, scandalous, bold, and honest all at the same time. And in some way in her telling her story, she enables you to deal with your own. ---  --- --- >**The last image was gotten from web:** _{**[Source 1 ](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/the-seven-husbands-of-evelyn-hugo-book-quotes--306807793383770426/)** **[Source 2 ](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/stuff--200902833369216843/)** **[Source 3 ](https://www.missknown.com/in-review-the-seven-husbands-of-evelyn-hugo/)**}