When Monique Grant, a junior magazine reporter is requested to interview the reclusive former movie star Evelyn Hugo, sha has no idea what she is getting into. Rather than a feature about her recent charitable donations, Hugo wants to give her life story, a story of rising from a motherless young girl in Hell’s Kitchen to the darling of Hollywood. They story behind her seven husbands and the true love of her life. Even a shocking secret that will rock Monique to her core.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is now the fourth novel from Taylor Jenkins Reid that I’ve read in a little less than a year and a half. Hugo, based in part on Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Rita Hayworth, is a complicated character, one forged by the lengths she had to go to in order to make it in Hollywood, was forced to hide her true self in order to become and stay famous, and one who used her privilege to her advantage with little regard as to who else it impacted.
This tale was also the start of the Reid’s interconnected universe, as husband number three. Mick Riva, would appear again in Daisy Jones and the Six and Malibu Rising, which itself introduced the star of Carrie Soto Is Back. I’m not sure what is coming next, but I look forward to reading it.

[…] a traditional romance novel to be. Its story shares some DNA with Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, where an aging protagonist looks back at her life story through her own lens while ostensibly […]