Now That’s What I Call a Breakdown

 So I read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and I have exactly seventy-seven emotions about it, most of which involve the queering of legacy, the violence of performance, and the ache of a love you have to keep in shadows. You know. Light summer reading.

If you've ever pressed your face to the glass of fame and wondered what it costs - if you like your stories glittering on the outside and bruised on the inside - this book will absolutely wreck you in the best way.

Here’s the full review:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½ – “Old Hollywood Glamour, Queer Yearning, and a Punch to the Heart”

There’s a line in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo that goes: “You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you’ve been working, how truly exhausted you are, until someone stands behind you and says, ‘It’s OK. You can fall down now. I’ll catch you.’” That’s what reading this book felt like - like being caught off guard by something far more tender, tragic, and true than the glittering premise might suggest.

Yes, Evelyn Hugo is a bombshell - a dazzling, scandal-drenched screen siren with seven husbands and a closet full of secrets. But behind the satin gowns and studio lights is a sharp, complicated woman who made hard choices in a world that offered her very few real ones. Her story, told to a modern-day journalist with secrets of her own, unfolds like a champagne-soaked confessional, full of ambition, love, manipulation, and loss. It’s part Old Hollywood tell-all, part slow-burn queer love story, and part takedown of respectability politics. Taylor Jenkins Reid doesn’t just write characters - she conjures them, flaws and all.

The half-star off? Maybe a slight structural predictability or that Monique (our present-day journalist) sometimes feels more like a lens than a person - but that’s almost the point. Evelyn takes up all the oxygen, and you’ll gladly let her.

If you’re drawn to stories about fame and fallout, powerful women making impossible choices, or slow-building revelations that ruin you in the best way, this book is worth your time. Just don’t be surprised if you come away wondering not just about Evelyn Hugo, but about the parts of yourself you’ve been hiding from the light.

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📖 One-liner: A glitter-drenched, heart-wrecking tale of love, legacy, and the price of being seen.

If you’ve read it, please come cry with me in the comments. I need to talk about that letter.