Book Recommended by Nitya Kamath

Lights, camera, action…

Evelyn Hugo is an old Hollywood actress who was famous for her iconic look, award-winning performances and most importantly her seven husbands.

Born as Evelyn Herrera, she grew up poor in Hell’s Kitchen. After changing her name and dyeing her hair blonde, she started climbing up the ladder of success and wanted to be nothing but the best. With each husband lay a different agenda, but Evelyn kept her life private and kept the public wanting more.

All alone at the age of 79, Evelyn is ready to tell her story. She enlists the help of a young and inexperienced magazine reporter Monique Grant to write her memoir. She is given the permission to publish Evelyn’s story after her death and keep the money as well. Excited and grateful for the opportunity to prove herself as a real author, Monique can’t help but wonder why Evelyn would choose her.

As Evelyn begins narrating the true story of her life, each calculating move and her achievements, the only question on Monique and the readers’ minds is “Who was Evelyn’s true love at the end?”. 

Each chapter is named after a husband with a hint of why the marriage ended. But the story reveals that there is so much more to her than just her short-lived marriages. It shows the struggles she faced being a female in a power-hungry male-dominated industry and how she overcame them. She was ambitious, crafty and never backed down.

Taylor Jenkins Reid, a New York Times Bestselling author, does a stellar job at making you forget that the characters are fictional. With a variation between flashbacks, news articles and the present, this book keeps you hooked on to the very end. The representation of different communities, even though the time period in which the story is the 50s, is refreshing and relevant. Overall, this book lives up to its popular reputation and is a must read.