The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Original Publication: 2017
Genre: Fiction (Historical), Romance
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is…unexpected, in the best ways.
On the surface, this is the story of an elderly former Hollywood starlet and icon who has been married seven times, very much in the vein of the real-life old Hollywood romances and scandals surrounding women like Elizabeth Taylor. Evelyn Hugo is beautiful, famous, wealthy, and mysterious. She has lived a life that seems too extravagantly dramatic to be real.
Despite the title, this book is not really about having seven husbands. It is about the choices people make when the world gives them impossible options.
“Don’t ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box. Don’t do that.”
Evelyn chooses an unknown journalist, Monique Grant, to write her autobiography, and at first we do not understand why. Why this reporter? Why now? Why reveal everything, including the parts of her life that make her look selfish, ruthless, and sometimes downright cruel?
The answer, when it comes, is one of the things that makes this book so interesting. Evelyn is not telling her story because she wants forgiveness or absolution at the end of her life. She is not trying to rewrite history so that she looks better. In many ways, she does the opposite.
It’s no secret that Evelyn Hugo is ruthlessly self-interested. She hurts every single one of her hapless husbands. She hurts Celia, the love of her life. She makes choices that devastate other people. And yet, there is something strangely refreshing about a character who is willing to say, “Yes, I did that. This is why I did it. And I’m not going to pretend I was someone else.”
In a world that is absolutely full of gaslighting, there is something compelling about someone who is brutally honest about her own behavior, even when that honesty does not make her look good.
Evelyn does not have regrets. It’s against her nature to regret choices she has made, since every choice served her own self-interests. She openly admits that she would make many of the same choices again. I do not say this to say that Evelyn is incapable of reflection. She does reflect. She simply does not repent.
That is uncomfortable, because we are programmed to expect redemption to come with remorse. We expect someone to say, “I was wrong, and I wish I had done things differently.” We wait for the apology before we consider forgiving. Evelyn does not really offer that. What she offers instead is accountability. I think you can be honest and accountable for your choices, even if you don’t regret them. Maybe especially if you don’t regret them.
Two things can be true at the same time – you can make a choice that made sense given your circumstances, and that choice could also be hurtful to someone else, destructive, or morally questionable. You could also not regret such a choice, even if society says you should. We’re brought up to believe that you’ll never regret doing the right thing. Here, we’re asked to believe that it’s possible to not regret doing whatever the hell you want, either, and damn the fallout.
That is what makes Evelyn such an unforgettable character. She would do it all again, even though she’s 100% cognizant of what her choices cost her – years with the love of her life. And all choices have consequences, don’t they? We all choose the prices we’re willing to pay. Imagine being on the other end of that equation, and your lover is willing to sacrifice years with you. Could you ever love such a person in the same way?
Taylor Jenkins Reid is incredibly skilled at creating complicated people. Evelyn is not a secret sweetheart hiding underneath a tough exterior. She is not a misunderstood victim who can be excused of every wrong thing she does. She is ambitious, selfish, loving, manipulative, loyal, and occasionally cruel, and Reid trusts the reader enough to let her be all of those things at once. After all, can you really judge someone like Evelyn without acknowledging that the very things you find fascinating about her are the same things that made her ruthless? We demand extraordinary people. We reward ambition, beauty, charisma, and success. Then we’re shocked to discover that achieving those things often required extraordinary selfishness? I was put in mind of Edith Piaf’s famous “Non, je ne regrette rien” – and, since it was released in 1956, Evelyn could conceivably have loved it too.
The setting is also essential to the story. This could not have taken place in the present day. Hollywood in Evelyn’s era was not just a place where people pursued fame; it was a place where image was everything. Being openly LGBTQ+ could have destroyed a career. The choices Evelyn makes, while often hurtful, come from a world where survival sometimes meant becoming someone the public could accept.
“It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.”
Her relationship with Celia St. James is where the book’s emotional weight really comes from. Evelyn’s choices become more understandable when you consider the world she came from. It’s not just a story about a fascinating, ruthless woman navigating a brutal industry. It’s a story about the price of survival. Evelyn’s tragedy isn’t that she’s been brutalized by Hollywood. It is that she has become so good at playing the game that she struggles to recognize what she was sacrificing in order to survive – years with the love of her life that can never be recovered.
And that may be the thing this book understands best: people can love each other deeply and still hurt each other terribly. In the hands of a less-skilled writer, the reveal at the end would have painted Evelyn as secretly noble, and let the reader off the hook. Evelyn would have been secretly good, secretly misunderstood, secretly justified. Reid doesn’t do that. I think that is what makes Evelyn so interesting. She doesn’t do it for forgiveness or absolution, because she’s not sorry. She does not become magically a good person because she finally told the truth. But there is a certain integrity in refusing to lie about the choices you made and the reasons behind them, to the people who deserve the whole picture.
Evelyn doesn’t try to convince us she was innocent, and I appreciated that about her. It left us room to accept the whole story about her, even when parts of it were hard to stomach. That’s human.
Fun Fact: Taylor Jenkins Reid has said Evelyn Hugo was loosely inspired by several Golden Age Hollywood actresses, including Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner, with influence from Rita Hayworth as well. A film adaptation has reportedly been in development, with Anna Kendrick attached to direct as of June 2026.
Bother if: You enjoy sharp, observant writing and complicated characters who refuse to fit neatly into categories of good and bad. If you love old Hollywood glamour, carefully constructed celebrity personas, and stories about people making impossible choices, you may even cross over into loving this one. Reid captures the feeling of Golden Age Hollywood in a way that feels incredibly authentic.
Don’t bother if: You struggle with deeply flawed female characters, themes of suicide, domestic violence, abuse, or LGBTQ+ themes. Evelyn is not always likable, and this is not a story where every hurt is neatly repaired. The characters make choices that are painful, selfish, and complicated.
