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Cover of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

If You Loved The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Read These Next

If you loved The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s breakout hooked millions with a glamorous, secret-keeping heroine and a story that treats ambition and love as the same dangerous thing. If you want that again — a larger-than-life woman, a confession unspooling across decades, an ending that rearranges everything — these are the books from our shelves we’d hand you next, each with a full review.

Why these match

  • ambition
  • fame
  • secrets
  • love
  • identity
  • old hollywood
Cover of Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

Pick 01 · Top match

Giovanni's Room

by James Baldwin

4.5 - Outstanding
FictionLiterary FictionLGBTQ+

If Evelyn's confession drew you in for the way a person can build a glittering life over a buried truth, Baldwin's narrator is the dark mirror of that bargain. A young American in 1950s Paris falls for a bartender named Giovanni and then recoils from what that love demands of him, narrating his own cowardice with devastating precision. It's slim, exposed, and unforgettable, an intimate study of shame, desire, and the identity we destroy ourselves to protect. For anyone who loves voice-driven literary fiction and a narrator who can't quite tell himself the truth.

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Cover of The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

Pick 02

The Prophets

by Robert Jones Jr.

4.4 - Excellent
FictionHistorical FictionLGBTQ+

Here love is sanctuary and target at once: Isaiah and Samuel, two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, hold to each other against a world built to break them. Told in a chorus of voices, lyrical and unflinching, it's for readers who come to a novel for its language and its ache.

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Cover of The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Pick 05

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

4.8 - Incredible
FictionHistorical FictionWomen's Fiction

Three women in 1962 Jackson risk everything to put the truth of domestic work on paper, which makes this, at heart, a book about who gets to tell a story. Voice-rich and grounded in everyday detail, it's built for book clubs that want courage and character over plot machinery.

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Cover of Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Pick 06

Lessons in Chemistry

by Bonnie Garmus

4.6 - Outstanding
FictionLiterary FictionWomen's Fiction

Elizabeth Zott is a 1960s research chemist with no patience for the men determined to underestimate her, and her unlikely turn hosting a cooking show becomes a quiet rebellion. Witty on the surface and genuinely angry underneath, it shares the anchor's pleasure of a woman who refuses to shrink.

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Cover of The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Pick 07

The Nightingale

by Kristin Hannah

4.5 - Outstanding
FictionHistorical FictionWomen's Fiction

Two French sisters take opposite paths through the German occupation, one enduring on the homefront, the other running toward the resistance. Hannah doesn't hold her feelings at arm's length, so come ready for a big, emotionally direct survival story and two heroines worth arguing over.

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Cover of Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

Pick 08

Black Cake

by Charmaine Wilkerson

4.2 - Excellent
FictionLiterary Fiction

A death, a recipe, and a voice recording open onto a multigenerational saga that travels from a Caribbean island to California. Like Evelyn's story, it unspools long-kept secrets across decades, but here the inheritance is names, grief, and the taste of belonging.

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Cover of White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Pick 10

White Teeth

by Zadie Smith

4.0 - Excellent
FictionLiterary FictionContemporary

Smith's debut is a sprawling, talkative comedy about two unlikely friends and the children who scatter in directions their fathers never imagined. Set across decades of multicultural London, it's a big, bustling novel for readers who want their family sagas packed with people, argument, and ideas.

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