This book has everything I didn’t know I needed.
“You can’t tell a single thing about a person’s true character if you both want the same thing. That’s like a dog and a cat getting along because they both want to kill the mouse.”
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Genre: Women’s Fiction / Historical Fiction
Page Count: 391
My Review: ♠♠♠♠ 4.5 / 5
The Blurb
Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one in the journalism community is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?
The Verdict
Wow! This book has everything I needed right now. I had seen the cover and read the blurb and thought, no, this book is not for me. It is a celebrity tell-all about dresses and parties. This will be one-dimensional, boring.
How wrong was I?! Turns out you actually can’t judge a book by its cover…
This is an easy read and one that will keep you turning pages long past the time you should be falling asleep, if only to find out why Evelyn chose Monique to write her biography. But it is also surprisingly intimate. As Monique listens to Evelyn’s story, the reader learns almost everything Evelyn Hugo has ever done, thought or felt, in great detail. As her story unfolds, we become best friends with someone who, at first, seemed so unreachable.
This is also a story of abuse, identity, love and the ways in which we use other people. It is set in the 1950’s and ’60s in Hollywood and showcases the rigid attitudes towards females, gender roles, race and sexuality of the time.
Evelyn is a character drawn in stark relief. She is ruthless and hard-working. She is not afraid to get what she wants from people, starting from when she left her childhood home. She is relentless in pursuit of wealth, yet she almost has a disregard for her own wellbeing. She feels uncomfortably real. It really brings into focus the ways women and minorities have to disguise who they are to be successful, to fit in.
If you like books about strong women, like The Nightingale, you’ll love this.
Great review!
Thanks! Have you read it?
No, I was going to comment on how I am considering reading it now, but I would have passed, as you said, just from a first impression, so thank you for overcoming that and sharing your review.
Great. Excited to hear what you think.
Well now I really want to read this book. Great review!
Thanks! Hope you like it.
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