The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
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This book is the definition of mid. I read it, it was fine, I’ll totally forget about it, and I don’t recommend it. You can read it casually at a winery and not think twice about it afterwards. It’s low-hanging Netflix fruit and I don’t get the hype.
I think that I’ve encountered the Taylor Jenkins Reid effect whereby you love the first book that you read by her and then everything is downhill from there. I want to be wrong, so let me know if I am. I’ve just noticed a steady decline; I read Malibu Rising and loved it, read One True Loves and couldn’t remember the plot a month later, and then left The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo feeling deflated. My point is that she seems to be opting for quantity over quality.
Anyway, let’s focus on this book itself. It has clear story structure, albeit not very imaginative– a reporter interviews Evelyn Hugo, a famous actress who then recounts time spent with each of her seven ex-husbands. Taylor Jenkins Reid writes fabulous people quite well; I loved the way that she wrote the stunningly beautiful, savvy, charismatic Nina in Malibu Rising. So, her portrayal of Evelyn is compelling because Evelyn herself is compelling.
Still, there were too many problems in the writing. The dialogue was super expository– so many things were spelled out ad nauseum. The amount of times Evelyn explicitly said, “you’re my best friend” to a particular character reached the point where it called for a drinking game. Do you talk like this to your best friend? Maybe occasionally but probably not because you convey that sentiment in other, more meaningful and realistic ways. That leads me to my next point– that she’s way too on the nose. Like wink, wink reader, you’re getting this, right? Instead of trusting in our capabilities as sentient human beings and trusting her story as inherently interesting, things are dumbed down to us in demeaning and frankly boring ways. Lastly, the attempt at suspense-building is kind of lame. There’s one looming secret that’s eventually exposed. I’ll admit that the secret is interesting, but the suspense leading up to it is overblown. It’s not worth it.
I guess I’m in my savage era but I really do think that as a society, we’re giving too much credit to books that are just *fine*. We have these recognizable authors with their trendy covers and stories that are easily converted into movies. We accept their mediocrity because it’s easy and accessible, and I genuinely hope that this site can help change that for readers. Not like I’m the God of reading, but I have read some books that I thought were astoundingly good, and so I hope that you choose those instead. Why read mediocrity when you could not? The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo receives 2 out of 5 flames.
