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bookedandbusy's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
This book was truly phenomenal. From the start I knew I was in for an incredible story, and it was delivered! This was a devastating but hopeful story, and I was so immersed in the story and characters and relationships that when I closed the book, I felt like I left a small part of myself behind. The last 50 or so pages had me sobbing and wishing the best for the characters. I loved this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Homophobia, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Cancer, Child death, Biphobia, Car accident, and Death of parent
Minor: Blood and Miscarriage
mr_ryancowboy's review
emotional
hopeful
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
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity, Biphobia, Sexual violence, Lesbophobia, Domestic abuse, and Homophobia
Moderate: Cancer, Abortion, Blood, and Alcoholism
badbadwolf's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Biphobia, Death of parent, Lesbophobia, Miscarriage, Outing, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death, Emotional abuse, Blood, Homophobia, Suicide, Abortion, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Cancer, Drug use, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Car accident, Grief, Pregnancy, Sexism, and Sexual content
micahhhh20's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse
Moderate: Self harm, Suicide, Death, Terminal illness, Cancer, Child death, and Homophobia
Minor: Alcoholism, Abortion, and Biphobia
emjay2021's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Absolute page turner. If you had asked me before if I was that interested in the lives of Golden Age Hollywood movie stars, I would have said, eh, not really. But I could not put this down and essentially read it in two sittings. The story works like this: Monique Grant, a junior writer at a Vanity Fair type magazine, is given a plum writing assignment, a cover story on the glamorous 80 year old former movie star Evelyn Hugo. It turns out Evelyn asked for Monique specifically but won’t reveal exactly why. So, Monique turns up at Evelyn’s New York apartment and hears her life story, warts and all. Interspersed with Evelyn’s rags-to-Hollywood-riches story are snippets from Monique’s life: newly separated from her husband, who has moved from New York to San Francisco for a job.
I thought the parts with Evelyn far outshone the bits with Monique. But we do discover by the end why Evelyn chose Monique specifically, and the book earns back a little bit with that ending.
I thought it was an excellent yarn, and the way the story was told (first person narrative by Evelyn for the most part) was a wise choice. You really do feel like an old movie star is telling you about her life.
There’s nothing particularly earthshaking in here, but that said, I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the narrative addressed social issues like homophobia, racism, and sexism. I was also a little surprised at just how moved I was by the ending of the book.
I enjoyed this at least as much as Daisy Jones and the Six, maybe a little more. I didn’t listen to it as an audiobook but I bet it would be a good one.
I thought the parts with Evelyn far outshone the bits with Monique. But we do discover by the end why Evelyn chose Monique specifically, and the book earns back a little bit with that ending.
I thought it was an excellent yarn, and the way the story was told (first person narrative by Evelyn for the most part) was a wise choice. You really do feel like an old movie star is telling you about her life.
There’s nothing particularly earthshaking in here, but that said, I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the narrative addressed social issues like homophobia, racism, and sexism. I was also a little surprised at just how moved I was by the ending of the book.
I enjoyed this at least as much as Daisy Jones and the Six, maybe a little more. I didn’t listen to it as an audiobook but I bet it would be a good one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Biphobia, Car accident, Adult/minor relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Lesbophobia, Emotional abuse, Domestic abuse, Death, Toxic relationship, Physical abuse, Grief, Sexism, Homophobia, Sexual content, Violence, and Death of parent
Minor: Abortion and Racism
imcalledzoe's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia, Suicide, Alcoholism, Biphobia, Death, and Domestic abuse
danielnski's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This book is mesmerizing from start to finish. I loved the old Hollywood references, the voice Jenkins Reid gave to Evelyn, and how it felt accurate to the character and the time she would have lived in without feeling dated or out of touch. I really couldn't put it down.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Outing, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Cursing, Death, Grief, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Cancer, Biphobia, Body shaming, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Infidelity, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, and Sexual content
Moderate: Abortion, Adult/minor relationship, Addiction, Alcoholism, and Drug abuse
lucyhicks's review
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
This was such a beautiful look into how much life can change in the span of just a few years, and how complex human relationships are. That love comes in so many shapes and sizes and your entire life can be turned around by just one decision is so beautifully highlighted here. It’s well-loved for a reason!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual harassment, Toxic relationship, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Sexism, Homophobia, Grief, Abortion, Biphobia, Pregnancy, Misogyny, and Sexual violence
wardenred's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
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
3.75
All of these things you’re so desperate to know, I promise I’ll answer them before we’re done. But I’m not going to answer them one minute before I want to. I call the shots. That’s how this is going to go.
Well, this was… a source of lots of mixed feelings. I absolutely adored Daisy Jones & the Six earlier this year, so I expected a lot from my next book by Taylor Jenkins Reid, especially since I’ve heard so many good things about this one. But where with Daisy Jones, the “written mockumentary“ format added a lot to the story, here, the “writing Evelyn’s memoir“ framing device fell flat for me. I feel like I see where the author was going with it; it offers that extra smoke screen, a level of separation between the reader and the larger-than-life movie star. Unfortunately, it ended up feeling more like a gimmick and, more often than not, a distraction.
It didn’t help that Monique was one of the most uninteresting characters I’ve “met“ lately and did absolutely nothing interesting as a journalist. It was also cringy how from the start, given this unique opportunity to write Evelyn’s tell-all, she immediately jumped to the husbands angle and the “Who was the true love of your life?“ question, especially since that question was asked before she had any hint of Evelyn being queer. Here you sit in front of a woman who’s been a cultural phenomenon for decades, her creative work influencing generations, and the main thing you want to know about her life is… which man in her life defined her? Meh. Honestly, even with the fact that Evelyn’s actual true love was a woman, I find this approach cringy, because while love is important, we all exist outside of our relationships, too, romantic or otherwise. Or rather, we exist in many relationships at once, and outside them, and between them, and to define one person solely through one specific romantic relationship is odd. Not to mention that I generally tend to roll my eyes at that “one true love“ concept, because it’s possible to love more than one person in a lifetime, and no one love should diminish or erase others.
I do feel that the story itself eventually did a good job of addressing these things. Evelyn does make a point of reaffirming that while Celia was the love of her life, she had genuine feelings for some of her husbands, too, and she also loved other people in a non-romantic way: Harry, Louisa, her daughter, her mother’s memory. So in retrospect, that heavy-handed pushing of the “so which husband was the most important, hmm?“ question as the central thread for the memoir was a very smart choice: create a faulty premise, contradict it with a follow-up. But something about the way it was presented at the beginning grated on my nerves.
I mostly enjoyed the character development here, even though, with the exception of Harry, there was hardly a single character that I liked. Evelyn was quite interesting; I liked how she didn’t shy away from admitting her flaws, and how while she didn’t hide that there were pretty awful things in her life that shaped her into the person she is, she refuses to paint herself as the victim and makes it clear that she made her own choices with what happened to her. She’s not a particularly likable character, but definitely a strong and compelling one. Harry was both interesting and likable; I admired how he toed the line between Hollywood cynicism and personal kindness, and how he was always there for Evelyn but also pushed her when she needed to be pushed, and pushed against her when he didn’t agree with the choices she tried to make for everyone. Celia, frankly, often annoyed me, but I did like how she was presented in the narrative: how Evelyn always spoke of her with so much love, but also showed enough of her flaws for the reader to be able to see them way before they got acknowledged. There were a few other characters who got to show up multiple times and grow and change over the decades in way that inspired no real sympathy in me but made me want to know what happens to them next. On the other hand, there were others who were barely more than slightly fleshed-out stereotypes.
What strikes me as odd was how little acting and film-making there was here, for a book about an actress. Evelyn talks a lot about the consequences of being a Hollywood star: the fame, the money, the recognition, the Oscars. But it’s only rather late in the book, and only for the sake of one specific plot point, that the actual *art* of it all gets some real attention. It was a stark contrast to Daisy Jones where songwriting and performing music took up a huge part of the narrative. Perhaps that’s because as a writer—also a creative artist—Reid had more to draw from as she wrote about people creating art, but a character’s who’s a performance artist was harder to tackle.
Overall, I liked it more than I didn’t, but I also felt like this was a queer story written very much with a straight eye, and in the last part of the book, it was all getting kind of… repetitive and needlessly dramatic for my tastes. I also wasn’t a big fan of the many rather obvious life wisdoms / truisms being presented as these life-shattering revelations. And I maintain that a lot more could be done with that framing device.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Death, Sexism, Biphobia, Domestic abuse, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, Homophobia, and Car accident
Moderate: Racism and Abortion
bryelle's review against another edition
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Obsessed with this book. It’s so lovely and queer and amazing way to look through someone’s life and think about how much people mean to you.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Death, Sexism, Car accident, Cancer, Sexual assault, Biphobia, and Homophobia
Moderate: Death of parent