Where to Start with Taylor Jenkins Reid: A Reading Guide

Taylor Jenkins Reid (born 1983) is the American novelist whose books — set in Old Hollywood, the 1970s rock world, and contemporary California — have made her one of the most widely read commercial literary novelists of her generation. She is particularly skilled at writing novels in which charismatic, complex women (Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones, Nina Riva, Carrie Soto) exist at the intersection of fame, ambition, and love, and at using formal experimentation (the mock oral history of Daisy Jones, the retrospective interview of Evelyn Hugo) to tell stories about the entertainment industry and celebrity culture. Her novels have dominated bestseller lists and generated devoted reader communities; The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six have both been adapted as television series.

Where to Start: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (2017)

The essential Taylor Jenkins Reid — and her most emotionally complex novel. Monique Grant, an unknown journalist at a celebrity magazine, is summoned without explanation to interview the legendary Evelyn Hugo, an Old Hollywood actress who has been reclusive for decades. Evelyn, now in her late seventies, wants to tell her life story for the first time — seven marriages, one extraordinary career, and the secret that has defined everything.

Reid moves between Monique’s present (her confusion about why she has been chosen) and Evelyn’s past across five decades of Hollywood history — the 1950s studio system, the sexual dynamics of a world in which women traded beauty for opportunity, and the decades-long love story between Evelyn and Celia, the actress she loved but could never be seen with publicly. The novel is about ambition and its cost, about the relationship between public image and private truth, and about what it means to spend a lifetime protecting a love that the world refuses to recognize.

Daisy Jones and the Six (2019)

Reid’s most formally innovative novel — structured as a mock oral history, with multiple interview subjects reconstructing the story of a legendary rock band, decades after its breakup. Billy Dunne’s band (the Six) is finding its sound in late 1960s Los Angeles; Daisy Jones is a solo artist whose talent is obvious and whose life is a controlled chaos of sex, drugs, and desire. When Daisy joins the band, the combination is explosive — commercially and creatively — but the relationship between Billy and Daisy generates a tension that eventually becomes unsustainable.

The oral history format — multiple voices, occasionally contradicting each other, revealing more than any single narrator would — allows Reid to build a complex portrait of creativity and self-destruction without reducing either to simple explanation. The most formally interesting of her novels and, for many readers, the most gripping.

Malibu Rising (2021)

Reid’s most family-focused novel — set over a single day in August 1983, as the four Riva siblings prepare for their annual party in their Malibu beach house. The party grows until it fills the beach; the four siblings are circling each other, each carrying their own private crisis; and the novel periodically pulls back to tell the family’s history — their mother June, their famous surfing father Mick Riva, and the way their fame-adjacent childhood shaped all of them. The novel’s structure (one long day, with flashbacks to decades of family history) is elegantly managed, and the ending — fire, revelation, release — is powerful.

Carrie Soto Is Back (2022)

Reid’s most sports-driven novel — about Carrie Soto, a legendary tennis player who retired as the greatest of all time, and who comes out of retirement to reclaim the grand slam record that another player is about to break. The novel is about competitive greatness and its price, about the relationship between Carrie and her father/coach, and about whether a woman defined by her sport can be a full human being. Reid’s most tightly plotted novel, with a climactic final tournament that is genuinely gripping.

Why The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Is the Ideal First Book

For a reader new to Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is the ideal first book because it is her breakout phenomenon and the fullest expression of her distinctive gifts, the compelling characters, the emotional depth, and the absorbing, glamorous storytelling. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo tells the story of a legendary, glamorous Hollywood star who finally reveals the truth about her life, loves, and secrets to a young journalist, in an absorbing, emotional, and richly characterized novel. As an entry point it is ideal, for it is her most famous work and a perfect example of her absorbing, emotionally rich, character-driven fiction. It welcomes the newcomer with its compelling heroine, its emotional depth, and its glamorous, absorbing story, drawing the reader into her distinctive vision. It is her most famous work and the one that best represents her gifts, so the new reader encounters Reid at her most characteristic. For the newcomer, then, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is the natural and ideal starting point.

What to Expect as a New Reader

As a new reader, you can expect The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo to be an absorbing, emotional, and richly characterized novel. You can expect a compelling heroine, for the legendary, glamorous Hollywood star Evelyn Hugo is a vivid, complex, unforgettable character. You can expect emotional depth, for the novel explores love, ambition, sacrifice, and secrets with real feeling. You can expect a glamorous, absorbing story, for the novel is steeped in the world of old Hollywood glamour. You can expect a frame narrative, for Evelyn reveals her life and secrets to a young journalist. You can expect engagement with love, identity, and the costs of fame. You can expect a propulsive, page-turning, and moving read. You should be prepared for some emotional and mature content. Expect, in short, an absorbing, emotional, and richly characterized novel, a captivating introduction to Reid’s gifts.

Going Deeper After Your First Book

Once The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo has introduced you to Reid’s gifts, the reader who wishes to go deeper can explore her other novels, which continue her compelling characters, her emotional depth, and her absorbing, often glamorous storytelling, several of them loosely connected by recurring characters and a shared world of fame and celebrity. Her acclaimed novels follow a rock band’s rise and fall, a tennis champion, a famous surfing family, and other vivid characters, each marked by her emotional depth, her absorbing storytelling, and her interest in fame, ambition, and identity. Reading these after The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo deepens your appreciation of Reid’s distinctive gifts, the compelling characters, the emotional depth, and the absorbing storytelling. Her characteristic strengths run through her work, and the reader captivated by The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo will find them across her novels. Building your reading journey through Reid is a matter of following her fiction from The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo into her other novels. The reader who begins here and continues will find one of the most popular and absorbing contemporary novelists to follow.

Reading Taylor Jenkins Reid

Reid’s fiction is built on the premise that the lives of women defined by public ambition — actresses, musicians, athletes — are worth examining with the same seriousness as the lives of men in similar positions, and that the particular constraints on their ambition (the studio system, the marriage market, the assumption that women are less serious competitors) make their stories more complex and more revealing. Begin with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo for the most emotionally layered and the most celebrated; read Daisy Jones and the Six for the most formally inventive; approach Malibu Rising and Carrie Soto Is Back for her later, more tightly structured work.