The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a Book We Can Start Calling a Modern Classic

I went into this book knowing exactly the amount of prior knowledge you should have when starting this book: zero. I knew absolutely nothing and I think that really enriched my experience. Since this is such a page-turner, I felt even more compelled to binge-read it, itching to find out what happens next.

There was one thing I was interested to see before I started it: how it is narrated. Just from seeing the cover, I knew that I would not like it and it would feel weird if the story was told in the third or first-person chronologically. There had to be some kind of divide where we knew intimate details of the story without us fully immersed because of who Evely was. Just from the cover and title, I knew that Evely would be a big deal in the book's universe and so there had to still be a fine line of mystery and ambiguity. Taylor Jenkins Reid delivered that exactly. Her choice of Monique driving the plot forward through the interviews works perfectly for there to be the right level of mystery and shows her human side.

My biggest problem with the narration style, and, frankly, my biggest problem with the entire book, is Monique. I never once really cared about her, nor sympathized with her. She was just so bland. I had trouble getting into the book at the beginning and didn't understand the hype when I first started because I was so bored with Monique. Maybe it's just me, but I wanted to skip ahead every time she was narrating.

However, Monique is my only problem with the writing because I think Reid delivered a masterclass in dialogue. The dialogue is so witty that as a theater nerd, all I wanted to do is say it out loud. It felt like you were reading a script at some points and I can just imagine how perfectly it will translate to the big screen. One of the highlights has to be the milkshake shop with Celia and Evelyn. You just immediately get a sense of who Celia is from just the dialogue, and that is when you know you are reading a good book. It's all show, no tell (Jojo Moyes should take some dialogue classes with TJR).

Although the characters are indeed marvelously written, I didn't particularly like most of them. I have already expressed my frustration with Monique and I will leave it at that because there are many positives with this book and if I think too much about her, this will turn into a very negative review. I liked Celia at the beginning but she quickly became so annoying I was almost happy when she left. I just did not think her reasons for leaving were that good and she felt very all-or-nothing to me, which I disliked. Evelyn's relationship with Connor was also so teased from the beginning, yet we get barely any of it in the story. Harry and John were the two best characters. I really liked Evelyn. She was a flawed character that I think was perfectly written and balanced all of the sides of her personality very well.

I think my major problems with the book are all personal. For example, I predicted the twist with Monique's dad. I knew there had to be some reason Monique was chosen, it had to have something to do with her dad because it was the only connection between her and Hollywood, plus he kept being mentioned, it was something bad that Evelyn did and Monique would hate her for, so when Harry refused to say the guy's name, Evelyn also didn't say his name, Harry said he couldn't leave Los Angeles, they met at the movie set but didn't say his job, and Evelyn just left him like that, I knew it had to be him. So since I predicted it, the ending was way more anticlimactic and actually kind of boring, since I had thought of all the things that were going through Monique's head ahead of time.

The other problem is that I just don't think it was really my vibe. I don't naturally gravitate toward any of the major themes or subgenres of the book. I am very glad I read it since it broadened my horizons and it is such a popular book that it is hard to talk to a modern bibliophile without mentioning this one. I completely understand the hype, I am just not part of it.