Evelyn Hugo is a straight up icon. While initally readers may believe she’s an icon in the traditional Hollywood style. For having seven husbands (take that Liz Taylor. Yeah, she had 8 but two of those were the same man. Hugo was actually seven different men), having the perfect body with a contrast of blonde hair and bronze skin that is breathtaking, for being sexpot to Oscar winner.

But what truly makes Evelyn Hugo an icon is that she’s willing to do anything to get what she wants, and she’d do it all over again with no regrets. She’s at once cynical yet deeply caring, heartless, careless but loyal to the end. She’s no saint and she knows it but that sort of honesty makes you admire her even more as you hate her. She’s incomparable, complex and magnatic.

I seriously couldn’t put this book down.

Jenkins brings readers through Evelyn’s history from the daughter of Cuban immigrants wanting more to a teenage girl escaping the misery of Hell’s Kitchen through marriage to naive Ernie Diaz. He wanted her, she wanted to get to Hollywood. That would be the first time Evelyn pragmatucally uses her body to get what she wants, setting the pattern that would define her career, her reputation and her blunt cynicsm.

From the 50s to the 80s, Evelyn is the captain of her destiny as well as the destroyer of her world. No one can control what she does which is why she has no regrets. She doesn’t try to shift or assign blame, she shoulders it all which makes her so commendable even as she brushes it off. She’s not looking for absolution as she tells Monique (our novel’s surprised protagonist reporter) her memoirs. She just wants to tell the truth after decades of hiding and building her reputation she can claw to the top.

Because that Evelyn Hugo has no regrets would be the biggest lie of all.

Out of her seven husbands, she had one true love that she almost let go. The actress, Celia St. James.

The center of the novel is really about love and the messy greyness that resides in all humans as we try to love each other and inevitably hurt each other instead. There’s different kinds of love from platonic soul mates, the kind of person that you can share deepest intimacy of knowing their true selves and give everything for them, to passions that last only one night. In a way, Evelyn loved each of her husbands (well, maybe not one or two of them) and they loved her whether as a forever family/best friend way, as a trophy to possess or as a ideal.

I cannot not emphasize enough how Evelyn possesses the spirit of Scarlet O’Hara in how far she is willing to go to survive, protect her image (and to an extent Celia’s because of the era they live in) and do it even at the cost of others. That may be her biggest fault as she can be unkind to the ones she loves, even as she protects them because she can’t give herself fully to any one relationship without letting go of her need to be the biggest star in Hollywood.

It also brings up the double standards so prevelant today in Hollywood or elsewhere as her sexpot reputation is used as a weapon to demean and demonize her, it arouses so they shame while giving her all the money as they pay to watch a 3-sec nude scene on the big screen. That’s how she remains ontop. She’s a whore, but really she’s so much more than that.

Jenkins expertly weaves the symapthy and disgust and fascination that Monique (and to an extent, the reader) holds towards Evelyn. She plays on the universal themes of love, sex and scandal that sells rags within the novel and hold our attention to the very last page.

Yet it inspires as Evelyn’s truth highlights the lies we tell ourselves, the ways we keep ourselves small or make excuses to hold ourselves back. We, women moreso, should be more ruthless to get what we want just as men do. It’s not worth to live with regret, and as sad it is to say, the world is not fair nor just to who deserves it. It gives to those who know the game, who are willing to be realistc/pragmatic and are willing to fight for what they want.

But sometimes, those cold rationals aren’t enough if you don’t know what you truly want as Evelyn admits. She didn’t know or at least she didn’t consider the one thing she wanted was enough compared to the others. Sometimes we delude ourselves that way too.

But love wins out as Reid writes with a compelling twist connecting Monique’s and Evelyn’s stories, exposing the morally ambiguity of what we expect from loved ones and the actions they make. . . and ultimately, how it doesn’t change the love one ultimately feels.

Reid has created such a dynamic, complex character. A modern heroine that we can learn and emulate, or simply enjoy reading because this story is a doozy. It’s heartfelt, heartaching and real. Just read it if you haven’t already!

So I think I gushed enough and I’ll just end with this quote that I feel summarizes Evelyn Hugo.

“People with self respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent. In brief, people with self respect exhibit a certain kind of toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character . . . . the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self respect springs.” ~Joan Didion