The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

  I'm not sure how I feel about this book.  If I'm looking purely at the writing quality there are plenty of things that stand out as weak.  One of the first things a writer is told is “show, don't tell” but there is a whole ton of telling throughout this book.  Every moment of subtlety and complexity is explicitly fed to us as subtle and complex.  This is not a book that gives the reader a lot of freedom when it comes to interpretation or piecing together.  You are told how to feel at all moments.  This is not a quality I enjoy in any form of media and some of my least favorite pieces that I have ever consumed have shared this attribute with this book.
And yet... this book got me.  By the time I got to the last few chapters I found myself being emotionally invested in Evelyn's story and how it related to Monique.  I shed some legitimate tears in the last few chapters.  For a book to make me feel actual emotion is an undeniable positive and I cannot deny that Seven Husbands did have that effect on me.  For all of the flaws I find her writing to have here, Reid writes some characters that are very easy to latch on to and that is a quality that every successful writer should have as it is really easy to forgive certain issues if you like the people you are reading about.  I'm not going to rush to the bookstore to buy another one of her books, but I can't say I regret reading Seven Husbands.