Book Review : The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

 

 

“People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is ‘you’re safe with me’- that’s intimacy.”

Trigger warnings : sexual assault, rape, domestic abuse, cheating, homophobia, biphobia, alcoholism, mentions of suicide.

    This book is glorious, Evelyn Hugo is a magnificient heroine and she carried this whole book, she shines so bright that you can’t focus on anything else. The attempts of the author to make parallels between Evelyn and Monique to show how Evelyn’s life impacted Monique were nice, but I, for one, couldn’t care less about the parts that had nothing to do with Evelyn (that’s how great she is). I adored the premise of this book, I adore how Evelyn is a self-made woman even though she used men to get on top, I adore how resilient she was, I think the phrase ‘What would Evelyn Hugo do?’ should be a thing because she’s a great role-model even though some of her decisions can be considered unkind.   
    One of the things I love the most about this book is how misleading the title is, you get into this book thinking it’s about the scandalous life of a movie star that had 7 husbands. And the book hypes who the real love of Evelyn is out of those 7 husbands. But surprise!! It’s not really what it seems. I loved the representation, it was great! I loved how Reid didn’t shy away from presenting the cinematic scene as it most probably was back then (and still has issues like this!) racist and homophobic as shit. I liked especially how Evelyn had issues with re-connecting with her herritage, with who she was, as she had to present herself as a white person for years just to have her success, just to keep her career.
I think the husbands added a lot to the story, since all their personalities were so different and you rooted for some of them (I loved Harry so much), yet some of them disappointed you so badly. This book covers so much, it has abuse in it, it talks of misogynism and the sexualization of women, even the men’s glare.
Something that I didn’t like about this book, but not so much to affect the rating, was Celia’s personality. At the beginning, I had nothing against her and even now, I don’t hate her. I just think she was very whiny sometimes and even cruel to Evelyn.
      I think Evelyn Hugo will be immortal in my mind as she is in her world.

Check my full review (with spoilers) on goodreads!