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A review by apollinares
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I don't understand the hype around this book. Maybe I'm just not into exposés. Maybe in the political climate we live in, stories about the trials and tribulations of rich people don't engage me. Maybe, as a queer person myself, reading straight women writing about these creepily inauthentic, sanitized versions of us, doesn't sit right.
Nobody ever said "bi". Nobody ever said "queer". It was always "bisexual", "LGBTQ+", as though the author was afraid to misstep and call the queers something that wasn't socially appropriate. It's clear to me that she's writing us as an outsider, and that makes it so boring and bland to read. I don't care what you have to say, you're not one of us, how can you capture us on a page? I'm assuming a lot of the audience is straight as well. No matter how much research the author did, it felt fake to me, but if you've never experienced the real thing - you'd see no issue with this because you haven't read any better. Every time someone opens their mouth to discuss LGBT issues in the book, it honest-to-god reads like a middle schooler's history report.
I'm white, so I have no perspective on this, but reviewers of colour have also said that this book's depictions of Evelyn as a Latina woman and Monique as a biracial woman are... not great. Monique feels like little more than a prop for some kind of social commentary (the writing isn't good enough for me to figure out what the comment is, though). There is better rep out there, you guys, please go read it. And please listen to reviewers of colour when they tell you that this white author has a lot of work to do in how she portrays the characters in her books that aren't white.
There were parts of the book I liked; I love a flawed protagonist that isn't looking for sympathy, and we absolutely get that with Evelyn. I enjoyed the use of news stories/the media to move the story along. The twist at the end was... engaging (even if the leadup to it was filled with cliché lines like "I didn't know yet how much I was going to hate her"). But all in all, this book just... fell short, for me, in every way possible.
Nobody ever said "bi". Nobody ever said "queer". It was always "bisexual", "LGBTQ+", as though the author was afraid to misstep and call the queers something that wasn't socially appropriate. It's clear to me that she's writing us as an outsider, and that makes it so boring and bland to read. I don't care what you have to say, you're not one of us, how can you capture us on a page? I'm assuming a lot of the audience is straight as well. No matter how much research the author did, it felt fake to me, but if you've never experienced the real thing - you'd see no issue with this because you haven't read any better. Every time someone opens their mouth to discuss LGBT issues in the book, it honest-to-god reads like a middle schooler's history report.
I'm white, so I have no perspective on this, but reviewers of colour have also said that this book's depictions of Evelyn as a Latina woman and Monique as a biracial woman are... not great. Monique feels like little more than a prop for some kind of social commentary (the writing isn't good enough for me to figure out what the comment is, though). There is better rep out there, you guys, please go read it. And please listen to reviewers of colour when they tell you that this white author has a lot of work to do in how she portrays the characters in her books that aren't white.
There were parts of the book I liked; I love a flawed protagonist that isn't looking for sympathy, and we absolutely get that with Evelyn. I enjoyed the use of news stories/the media to move the story along. The twist at the end was... engaging (even if the leadup to it was filled with cliché lines like "I didn't know yet how much I was going to hate her"). But all in all, this book just... fell short, for me, in every way possible.