This article contains spoilers…duh! <3
My rating five out of five stars.
I read Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid last summer and I was completely obsessed. It was the first book that I have read since I was a child that made me cry while reading. Once, I was done I immediately wished that I could read it for the first time all over again. When I had heard about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo I knew that I had to read it. The synopsis sounded similar to Daisy Jones and The Six and I mentally prepared myself to be a little disappointed.
Instead, I found myself completely thrilled by this book. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is now my favorite book. Period.
Entering the book I was excited to fall in love with the main character Monique. She was a mixed-raced journalist and I realized that I haven’t read a book with a character who talked about the struggles of being mixed raced. While reading I had to stop often and think to myself, “Yeah. I totally get this.”. However, as the book went on I found that I connected to a totally different character a lot more.
Evelyn Hugo was portrayed larger than life character who turned out to be surprisingly human after all. I discovered later that this book often is marketed as LGBTQ friendly. However, when I picked it up I was excited to read about Evelyn’s seven husbands. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the love of Evelyn’s life was a woman and fellow costar Celia St. James.
The descriptions of the LGBTQ community within the novel were absolutely stunning. I loved reading about the found family that Hugo had stumbled upon. Harry Cameron was my favorite husband because I think he’s the only one that truly loved Evelyn for who she was. Of course, this isn’t the romantic sort of love because Harry was a homosexual. However, I think that the dynamic of Harry’s love for John and Evelynn’s love for Celia and everyone’s respective love for each other was beautiful.
That’s the most striking part of the novel for me. I think that the depictions of love within the novel are stunning. Despite Celia and Evelynn’s epic love story, I like that it’s not perfect. In fact, within the novel, everyone’s love for each other is wonderfully imperfect and lifelike. I think this book is a brilliant celebration of life, of community and a wonderful analysis of society and the human experience. If you want to find a complex book that will leave you changed as a person this is it.