“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” - Taylor Jenkins Reid

 🎬 Monique Grant is an unknown journo who has been plucked seemingly out of nowhere to interview Evelyn Hugo an oft-married, enigmatic former Hollywood diva, by Evelyn herself.

What I liked the most about SHEH is that we are in the same exact position as Monique. We want to know Hugo’s closely guarded secrets, the details behind her seven marriages, and almost more importantly, we want to know why she chose this journalist out of so many to write her biography and to be the exclusive beneficiary of the profits of that biography. Like Monique, we have been lured in by the sheer improbability of it all, and our incredulity keeps us captive until Hugo decides to let us in on her many secrets, using each of her husbands as a chronology marker for the passage of time over Hugo’s decades-long career.

🎬 I thought I had narrowed down the connection between Monique and Evelyn down to two possibilities. I don’t think Reid intended it to be a plot twist, but a gradual revelation. When the secret is finally out, it is the exact sort of bombshell readers have been anticipating since Monique first arrived at Evelyn’s apartment.

🎬 Evelyn is the most multi-faceted depiction I have read recently. Reid has us overwhelmingly rooting for her, yet her flaws (and there are many) are not hidden away. She felt very real. 

🎬 From the criminality-induced secrecy of the ‘60s, to Stonewall, and the terror of AIDS - Reid takes these flashpoints up in turn as Evelyn’s personal life develops against this background. Certainly, the perspective of the LGBTQ+ community in Hollywood in particular, and America at large, isn’t used merely as a prop by Reid. It forms part and parcel of the story. Makkai’s “Believers” digs deeper into this era.

🎬 I enjoyed this novel; and the element of mystery was a pleasant surprise! I had two concerns that kept me from giving SHEH a full ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️.

🎬 My minor issue with SHEH was that it suddenly became preachy at the end. I enjoyed the candor up to that point, but the sudden shift felt disjointed.

🎬 Of greater concern to me, was what seemed often to be a conflation of the broader Latin American culture with Cuban American culture. Aspects of Reid’s writing pertaining to Evelyn’s identity lacked authenticity IMO and read like a third party writing about “exotic” cultures. 

I thought Evelyn’s distancing herself from her Cuban American heritage was a crucial plot point, but I didn’t care for its presentation - it felt too stereotypical to be real. For example, there’s a passing line where Evelyn has evidently surprised herself by her level of dissociation from her roots - she claims that any Cuban American woman must have “Latin American” books and cumin in her pantry. Those thoughts might make sense (though still cringeworthy) of an outsider judging Evelyn, but it makes far less sense for Evelyn examining her own life to reduce her heritage to decorative books and seasoning.

🎬 Notwithstanding the two concerns I had, SHEH was a solid book and I’d recommend it!