A deep dive into The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, its queer love story, and author Taylor Jenkins Reid coming out as bisexual…
There’s a moment in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo when the glamour cracks just enough for the truth to shine through — and it’s not about fame, or scandal, or even love in the way we’re used to seeing it. It’s about finally being seen. And when I closed the book for the last time this week — okay, when I hugged the book and then immediately Googled everything about it — that’s what stayed with me.
Because yes, Evelyn Hugo is dazzling. Yes, she’s unapologetic, complex, flawed, and calculating. But at her core — beneath the emerald gowns and tabloid headlines — she’s a queer woman who had to spend most of her life hiding the most honest parts of herself.
It’s easy to forget in 2025 that stories like this haven’t always been allowed to exist — especially not as bestsellers, especially not written by authors who, until recently, didn’t feel safe to claim their own queerness publicly.
And that brings us to Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Why Evelyn Hugo matters: A queer love story disguised as Old Hollywood scandal
Let’s start with the surface: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a juicy, delicious read. The structure — a reclusive, Elizabeth Taylor-esque icon offering up a tell-all to an unknown journalist — is brilliant. It seduces you with promises of secrets and celebrity dirt, and then sneaks in something far more intimate: a portrait of queer love, grief, and sacrifice.
The titular husbands are more narrative devices than central characters. Evelyn’s true love is Celia St. James, a fellow actress whose presence ripples across the decades of Evelyn’s life — in stolen glances, hidden letters, and choices that cost them dearly. Their relationship isn’t perfect, but it’s real in a way that queer readers don’t always get: complicated, messy, shaped by fear and longing and societal pressure.
This isn’t a “coming out” story in the traditional sense. It’s about survival. About the million quiet decisions queer people have had to make — and still make — to protect themselves. Who to trust. What to say. Whether visibility is worth the risk.
There’s a brutal kind of beauty in watching Evelyn navigate all this while the world thinks it knows her, and it’s a reminder that every closet is different — not always built from shame, but from necessity.
Taylor Jenkins Reid quiet queerness, and why that matters
Until recently, Taylor Jenkins Reid — the author behind Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones & The Six, and other massive hits — hadn’t spoken publicly about her own queerness. Married to a man, often assumed to be straight, she was routinely celebrated (and sometimes criticized) for writing queer stories as an “ally.”
But in a recent interview with Time, Reid came out as bisexual. And what struck me wasn’t just her words, but the emotional architecture behind them:
“It has been hard at times to see people dismiss me as a straight woman,” she said. “But I also didn’t tell them the whole story.”
That hit. Hard.
Because so many of us know what it’s like to occupy that in-between space — where the world defines you by the surface, and the truth lives in a room you keep locked. Reid described that room as part of her identity, and said that her husband, Alex, fully understood that Evelyn Hugo was her way of spending time in that space.
There’s something deeply moving — and deeply queer — about that metaphor. It’s not about denial or deception. It’s about reclamation.
And it adds another layer to the novel itself. Evelyn’s story, while fictional, now feels like a mirror held up to Reid’s own experience. Not literally, but emotionally. Writing Celia and Evelyn wasn’t just a craft exercise — it was personal. A way of exploring her own identity through art before she felt ready to name it in real life.
Representation that doesn’t scream — it whispers
We often talk about queer stories in terms of boldness. The trailblazing. The activism. The celebration. And those are vital.
But there’s also power in softness. In longing. In stories that don’t center trauma, but still acknowledge it. Evelyn’s story doesn’t scream queerness from the rooftops — it whispers it into the spaces between the lines. And that whisper can be just as loud, if not louder, to those who recognize it.
When I think about the version of me who grew up watching straight romances where queer characters were either tragic side plots or invisible, Evelyn Hugo feels like a gift I didn’t know I needed. It’s a mainstream, best-selling, being-adapted-by-Netflix kind of story — and at its heart, it’s about two women who loved each other. Who tried, failed, hurt, forgave. Who kept choosing each other, even when the world wouldn’t let them do it out loud.
Bi erasure, and the courage of naming yourself
Reid’s coming out also speaks to something many bisexual people know too well: the pressure to prove it. If you’re in a “straight-presenting” relationship, people assume. If you don’t perform your queerness in obvious ways, people dismiss. And if you write queer stories without fitting the mold, the criticism can be deafening.
Which is why her choice to finally say it — plainly, without apology — matters. Especially in a cultural moment where bisexuality is still misunderstood, fetishized, or erased entirely.
And maybe that’s part of the legacy of Evelyn Hugo, too: the quiet assertion that queerness doesn’t always look like you think it will. That some people live their whole lives balancing visibility and survival. And that just because a story doesn’t announce itself as queer doesn’t mean it isn’t — sometimes, it’s just waiting for the right person to see it.
The book we needed, the author we understand now
So yeah — I just finished The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and I get it now. The obsession. The TikToks. The tattoos. The fan casts. This isn’t just a good book. It’s a necessary one. And it’s even more meaningful now that we understand the personal truth behind it.
Taylor Jenkins Reid didn’t owe us her story. But she gave us Evelyn’s. And then, slowly, bravely, she gave us a piece of her own.
And for anyone who’s ever kept a room of themselves closed off — whether from the world, or from themselves — that’s everything.
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