Taylor Jenkins Reid's trick was the interview: a famous woman, a listener, and a life unpacked one husband at a time. These twelve share the shape — glamour with a cost, ambition that isn't apologised for, and a secret held for decades.
Editor's Picks
- Daisy Jones & The Six — read this next
- The Final Revival of Opal & Nev — the sharper cousin
- City of Girls — the unrepentant one
01Daisy Jones & The Six
A 1970s rock band's rise and split, told as an oral history. Reid's other great performance — read this next and nothing else first. Written entirely as transcript, so it reads in an evening, and the band's break-up is genuinely devastating.
02Malibu Rising
Four famous siblings, one party, one night in 1983. Lighter than Evelyn, and quietly connected to her world. One night, one house, one fire coming. Lighter than Evelyn but beautifully built.
03The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
A Black Afro-punk singer and her white British partner, reconstructed through interviews. The sharpest of the oral-history novels on race and fame. Walton is much harder on the industry than Reid is, and it is the better book for it.
04City of Girls
A young woman sent to a crumbling New York playhouse in 1940 and given her freedom. Unrepentant about pleasure in a way few novels manage. Gilbert lets her heroine enjoy herself without punishment, which is still surprisingly rare.
05Carrie Soto Is Back
A retired champion returns at thirty-seven to defend her record. The best of Reid on ambition without apology. You need not care about tennis. Carrie is deliberately unlikeable and completely compelling.
06The Age of Light
Lee Miller leaves modelling for Paris, Man Ray and photography. A real woman refusing to stay the muse. Strong on the cost of being taken seriously, and on Paris between the wars.
07Beautiful Ruins
An Italian innkeeper, a dying starlet and fifty years of consequences. Funny and elegiac about the machinery of fame. Hops between 1960s Italy and modern Hollywood, and lands both. Very funny in places.
08The Paris Apartment
A sealed Paris building and everyone in it lying. Here for the secrets and the structure rather than the glamour. Pure plot, told from several floors of the same building. A weekend book.
09One True Loves
A widow rebuilding her life when her first husband is found alive. The most straightforwardly heartbreaking Reid. A high-concept premise played completely straight, and it works.
10The Guest List
A celebrity wedding on a remote Irish island, and a body by the end of the night. Glossy people, buried history. Multiple narrators, an island, and a storm. Foley's most efficient thriller.
11Sorrow and Bliss
A brilliant, unwell woman and the marriage she takes apart. Nothing to do with Hollywood and everything to do with a woman telling her own story. Very funny about something not funny at all. The dialogue is the best on this list.
12The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
A woman trades her soul to live forever and be forgotten by everyone she meets. Three hundred years of being unrecordable, then one person remembers. Three hundred years of being forgotten, told without ever feeling repetitive. Schwab's best.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I read straight after Evelyn Hugo?
Daisy Jones & The Six. Same author, same oral-history structure, and for a lot of readers the better book. Malibu Rising after that, since it shares the world.
Is there anything as good that isn't Taylor Jenkins Reid?
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is the strongest — same format, sharper on race and the price of the myth. City of Girls is the most purely enjoyable.
Do I need to read her books in order?
No. They are standalones with small overlaps — a character glimpsed here, a name mentioned there. Evelyn Hugo, then Daisy Jones, is the order most readers are happiest with.
Something with the glamour but a proper mystery?
The Guest List or The Paris Apartment. Both are Lucy Foley doing beautiful people with dreadful secrets, and both move fast.
Shelf 02Crime & Mystery
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