Is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Worth Reading?
Ada’s Score
Taylor Jenkins Reid constructs this novel as an interview — a dying Hollywood legend finally telling her truth to a young journalist — and the architecture is quietly brilliant. Evelyn Hugo is glamour and calculation and buried feeling, a woman who married six times in public while loving someone else entirely in private. The LGBTQ love story at the centre is not a subplot; it is the spine. Reid writes desire and self-concealment with genuine emotional intelligence, and the 1950s–80s Hollywood setting earns its place rather than merely decorating the narrative. The prose is accessible without being thin. This rewards anyone drawn to stories about identity, performance, and the cost of hiding.
Deep Dive“Don't let the glitzy cover fool you. Evelyn Hugo will break your heart and make you grateful for the wreckage.”
Old Hollywood Glamour Hides a Revolutionary Love Story
There's a moment in this book where Evelyn Hugo finally tells the truth, and I felt it land in my chest like something I'd been waiting for without knowing it. Taylor Jenkins Reid writes glamour and grief with equal precision — the Hollywood veneer is dazzling, but it's the queer love story underneath, long buried and fiercely protected, that gives this novel its real weight. I finished it feeling both wrecked and grateful, the way you feel after someone finally says the thing that needed to be said.
Ada Brief
AI reading intelligence“Don't let the glitzy cover fool you. Evelyn Hugo will break your heart and make you grateful for the wreckage.”
Old Hollywood Glamour Hides a Revolutionary Love Story
There's a moment in this book where Evelyn Hugo finally tells the truth, and I felt it land in my chest like something I'd been waiting for without knowing it. Taylor Jenkins Reid writes glamour and grief with equal precision — the Hollywood veneer is dazzling, but it's the queer love story underneath, long buried and fiercely protected, that gives this novel its real weight. I finished it feeling both wrecked and grateful, the way you feel after someone finally says the thing that needed to be said.
Ada’s reservations
The frame narrative is pure machinery—Monique's subplot exists only to justify the structure, and the third-act twist linking them is a coincidence so contrived it cheapens Evelyn's hard-won honesty.
Ada’s score reflects both strengths and reservations.
Book Details
- Publisher
- Washington Square Press
- Published
- January 1, 2018
- Pages
- 400
- Language
- ENG
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Ada’s Score
4.47
Ada’s editorial score — not an aggregate of reader reviews.
Common Questions About The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
- Is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo worth reading?
- Don't let the glitzy cover fool you. Evelyn Hugo will break your heart and make you grateful for the wreckage. Ada rates it 4.5 out of 5.
- What are the main weaknesses of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo?
- The frame narrative is pure machinery—Monique's subplot exists only to justify the structure, and the third-act twist linking them is a coincidence so contrived it cheapens Evelyn's hard-won honesty.
- How many pages is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo?
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is 400 pages long — around 7–8 hours at an average reading pace.
