Reviews tagging 'Incest'

Los siete maridos de Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

30 reviews

alli_andrews's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense 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

5.0


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rat_girly's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious 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

4.75

After a slow start I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this book. I liked how the story prompted me to reflect on the development of queer acceptance over the decades, and gave me a new appreciation for queer people who came before me. I loved the themes of found family, community, and the different kinds of soulmates and love we can find in this world.

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kingcrookback's review against another edition

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emotional 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
...I wish I liked this the way I've seen other people like it. I don't hate it, by any means, but this really didn't live up to the hype for me. I'm all for diving into the nitty-gritty of fame and the panopticon of celebrity. I even found it engaging to tick off the references to real famous people and Old Hollywood stars - Evelyn as an amalgam of Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlene Dietrich, and Joan Didion, Harry's car accident analogous to Montgomery Clift's and his being closeted similar to Cary Grant's - and I appreciated that Reid didn't strain credulity by shoehorning or name-dropping actual celebrities. But the only part of this book's treatment of fame that truly engaged me was
the transactional exchange between Evelyn and her driver after Harry's car accident
because it stood out as one of the only times I could viscerally feel how grimy the business of fame could be.

Little else about the book truly grabbed me. Evelyn was handled in this blandly girlboss-y feminist way and had a jarringly modern understanding of queerness for the 1950s-70s. The amount of time we got to spend with Celia wasn't really conducive to building an actual attachment to her character, ditto Monique. The memoir narrative felt unmoored in time, despite the descriptions of clothing that were supposed to help in that respect. Like, I don't care what people were wearing, tell me about what attitudes were like in that decade, that year. If you want to talk about the fashion so badly, why not make some connection to how clothing can signify in microcosm what was going on in society at large? Once again, I honestly just wish I saw what other people see in this book.

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idontread's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective sad 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? It's complicated

4.25

to anyone who saw me crying alone in the airport lounge while reading this no u didn’t

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vireoeo's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring 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? Yes

4.0

I didn't think I was going to like this at first - not really any fault of the writing, but it's very different from my usual genres and I found it a bit too straightforward and (at times) tell-not-show-y. But as soon as it switched to Evelyn's POV I was enraptured. I cried a whole bunch of times, fell in love with most of the characters, and I will be telling everyone I know to read this.

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kappafrog's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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

I zoomed through this book. I was really compelled to find out all its secrets. But now that I'm done, I'm not sure how o feel about it. The ending should have had more to it after a major revelation late in the book. The handling of race was clumsy. But I loved the fictionalization of a situation many in Hollywood found themselves in.

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cawaza's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-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

4.5


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particledamage's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.75

I feel like I am actively going insane.

Seeing good reviews for this books feels like I am on another planet.

This book is genuinely dreadful. It is both rushed and a slog. It is both biphobic and bisexual, racially inclusive and racist, about misogyny and sexist. It's preachy but only ever about like... basic decency things we all agree about. Finding out the author is straight and white clarified the book for me, truly felt like someone had just lovingly pried open my third eye so I could see the truth of the matter. 

I honestly don't even think I can neatly summarize all of my complaints here. I sent myself emails with incoherent notes to myself about every new thing that set me off--her "soulmate" being emotionally abusive in patterns identically to her physically abusive spouse. The weird bullying about coming out as if was a CW show handling its first gay plotline and not about two grown women in the 50s and 60s. The weird contrived bit where whenever someone needed to get exposed for something, everyone would suddenly become letter-writers so that the letters could be found. The plot twist that was so insanely stupid I dropped the book.

The way that not only did the book pause to go on diatribes to know that terms like "whore" are bad but also spent an entire chapter knowing every single historical event that has happened, Evelyn was on the right side of it. She's complicated and obsessed with herself and money and glory but don't worry, she was right about Vietnam and treats her hired help well.

God, her character was repugnant but mostly in a dull way. Every character in this story was uninteresting, heinous, or both. Even Harry gets ruined in the end and he was the single enjoyable character the entire way through.

Just... what an awful experience. I'm speechless. 

Read it just in a day though, so at least there's that.

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ogl00's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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nehanaomi's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious 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? Yes

4.5

i support women's rights, but i also support women's wrongs. 

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