Books Like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Why Each Pick

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Evelyn changes her name and her hair color to get into the world she wants, and James Gatz becomes Jay Gatsby for the same reason. Both books are narrated by an outsider drawn into a glamorous life and left to sort the legend from the person. Fitzgerald trades Hollywood for 1920s Long Island and is far shorter, at 180 pages, with a sharper, sadder ending.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Another sweep through mid-century American entertainment, this time the comic-book boom of 1940s New York, where two cousins create a superhero and build careers on it. Like Evelyn, one of them has to hide who he loves to keep his place in the business. Chabon's novel is longer, at 639 pages, with denser prose and a larger historical canvas that reaches into World War II.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Shares Evelyn's refusal to accept the role an industry assigns a woman. Elizabeth Zott is a chemist in the 1950s and 60s who ends up hosting a TV cooking show and treats it as a science class. The tone is lighter and more comic than Reid's, with a scene-stealing dog, but it is just as angry about the double standards women faced.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Another woman's long life told looking back, shaped by one costly bargain. Addie trades her soul to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets, the opposite of Evelyn's fame. Schwab adds fantasy, a 300-year timeline that alternates with present-day New York, and a slower, more lyrical pace across 444 pages.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Follows a partnership across three decades of fame, rivalry and loyalty, the way Evelyn's story spans her career. Sam and Sadie build video games instead of films, and their bond is a friendship rather than a romance, though no less intense. Like Reid, Zevin jumps between eras and lets the reader see how early choices echo for years.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

For readers who came for the love story at the center of Evelyn Hugo. Patroclus tells of his life with Achilles, a bond the world around them never fully names, shadowed by Achilles' hunger for lasting fame. It is a retelling of the Iliad, so the setting is ancient Greece and the ending follows the myth. The prose is more lyrical and the mood more tragic.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Another story about a celebrated, beautiful woman whose public image hides a very different truth, with the gap between legend and fact driving the plot. Here the woman is already dead, and her story comes out through the people at Manderley and the nameless young bride who replaces her. It is a 1938 gothic suspense novel, darker and slower than Reid's.

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Shares Evelyn Hugo's central problem: a love affair that must be hidden from the press because of who the lovers are. The First Son of the United States and a British prince fall for each other while their families manage the headlines. It is a contemporary romantic comedy, far lighter and more hopeful than Reid, with a few explicit scenes.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

More Taylor Jenkins Reid, and another love between two women that has to stay out of public view. In the early 1980s, astronomy professor Joan Goodwin trains for NASA's shuttle program and falls for fellow trainee Vanessa Ford. It trades Hollywood glamour for the space program and a career told in retrospect for a mission in crisis, but it has the same mix of ambition, secrecy and heartbreak.