Since it exploded on BookTok last year, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2017 novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo has stayed checked out, and with the announcement of a Netflix adaptation coming in the future, that’s not likely to get better anytime soon. So if you’re looking for something that might actually be on our shelves (or at least have a shorter wait) I have some ideas for you!
Sister Stardust by Jane Green reimagines 1960s icon Talitha Getty, a real model and socialite, in her latest novel. Claire is a young woman from a small town, and she moves first to London, then to Marrakesh, where Getty lives in a palace with her oil-heir husband. There, Claire is swept up in a lush party lifestyle, filled with art, free love, and music including the Rolling Stones. Like Evelyn Hugo, this is a book about a burgeoning friendship between woman and the contrast between a glamourous lifestyle and the secrets we keep. Available: (print) (large print) (book on CD) (ebook) (eaudiobook on OverDrive) (eaudiobook on Hoopla)
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton might be a good answer if you’ve already read Reid’s 2019 book Daisy Jones & the Six. It centers the music scene in the 1970s, and uses an oral history format as music journalist S. Sunny Shelton works on a piece memorializing Opal & Nev, a duo in talks to reunite for a special engagement decades after their dissolution. Opal, a Black woman from Detroit, teamed up with Nev, a white Brit– but things got dicey when their record label also signed a band who used Confederate flag imagery. The drama that followed? You’ll have to read the book to find out. Like Evelyn Hugo, this book plays with the format of telling a story publicly and the issues attendant on fame. Available: (print) (large print) (ebook) (eaudiobook)
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert takes on showgirls in the 1940s. At nineteen, college dropout Vivian Morris goes to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a theater in New York City. At eighty-nine, Vivian looks back on her colorful life. The people she knew, the mistakes that led to professional scandal, and the love of her life. Like Evelyn Hugo, this book is concerned with a woman at the end of her life reflecting on how she spent it. Available: (print) (book on CD) (playaway audio) (ebook) (eaudiobook)
