Evelyn 7s, or Seven Evelyns

As a librarian, a lot of books cross my desk. One of my favorite side effects of this is noticing when multiple books have very specific yet oddly similar titles, even though the books themselves have very little in common. In that vein, today I present you with Seven Evelyns:

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
In this novel, rookie journalist Monique Grant scores the interview of a lifetime: aging Hollywood starlet Evelyn Hugo, who at 79 is finally ready to tell her secrets. Beginning with her childhood in Hell’s Kitchen, Evelyn tells her story one husband at a time, revealing along the way she crafted a career in Hollywood and the secrets she’s long kept secret.

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
In this mystery, Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day. At a party commemorating the long-ago death of a child, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered. Party guest Aiden Bishop wakes up the following day, and discovers he’s inhabiting the body of a different party guest. The day after that, he wakes up as yet a different guest. Aiden will continue his eight-day loop until he can solve Evelyn’s murder.

Do you want even more? Check out the title-adjacent novel The 7 Rules of Elvira Carr by Frances Maynard. Neuro-atypical Elvira has largely been sheltered from the outside world. When her mother is moved to a nursing home, Elvira devises a seven-step approach to confronting her social anxiety and surviving on her own.

~ posted by Andrea G.