The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

But then Harry set me up on a date with Don Adler, and I forgot why I would ever have resented the idea in the first place.

But the truth is, praise is just like an addiction. The more you get it, the more of it you need just to stay even.

Half a grapefruit and a lit cigarette.

what pissed me off more than anything was that if she was going to sell a story, why wasn’t it that one? Why didn’t she tell the world that Don Adler was beating his wife? Why, instead, did she come after me?

“I’m too old, Celia. But thank you for that.” Celia smiled, and I realized I’d played right into her hands.

You have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.

“Heartbreak is loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.”

It’s sloppy, and it feels akin to meeting a Newfoundland.

You wonder what it must be like to be a man, to be so confident that the final say is yours.

“You are a whore, Evelyn. You let men screw you for fame. And that is why I’m leaving you.”

I have no idea that in less than a week, Evelyn Hugo will finish her story, and I’ll find out what this has all been about, and I will hate her so much that I’ll be truly afraid I might kill her.

Because after that, I ruined it.

“The problem was, I used my body to get other things I wanted. And I didn’t stop doing that, even for her. That’s my tragedy.

“I’m not a good person, Monique.

“I don’t know,” I say. “You don’t seem so bad, Evelyn.” “You, of all people, are going to change your mind about that,” she says. “Very soon.”

the root of most of my problems is that I need to be secure enough in who I am to tell anyone who doesn’t like it to go fuck themselves?

Some marriages aren’t really that great. Some loves aren’t all-encompassing. Sometimes you separate because you weren’t that good together to begin with.

But once he has his hand on the doorknob, I realize that I have put into motion the end of a lackluster life in the interest of eventually finding a great one.

My heart ached in my chest when I thought about telling Connor, when I thought about trying to live a day without him, when I thought of a world without Harry Cameron.

I just want you to know that I admire you for it.” “Don’t say that,” Evelyn says. “OK? Just do me a favor, and don’t say anything like that. I know who I am. By tomorrow you will, too.”

“Harry had fallen in love with a Black man. His name was James Grant. He died on February 26, 1989.”

You don’t have to make yourself OK for a good mother; a good mother makes herself OK for you.