Book Review: The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

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OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: You wait ages for The One . . . then 203 come along at once 

One night Lauren finds a strange man in her flat who claims to be her husband. All the evidence – from photos to electricity bills – suggests he’s right. Lauren’s attic, she slowly realises, is creating an endless supply of husbands for her. There’s the one who pretends to play music on her toes. The one who’s too hot (there must be a catch). The one who makes a great breakfast sandwich. The one who turns everything into double entendres (‘I’ll weed your garden’). And the one who can calm her unruly thoughts with a single touch. 

But when you can change husbands as easily as changing a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good-enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one? And how long should you keep trying to find out?

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The Husbands by Holly Gramazio was a solid read. It’s not just solid, it’s an exceptional one.

Our protagonist Lauren comes home from a girls night out and is greeted by a stranger who claims he is her husband. Her house is not exactly as she remembers it, and this person has apparently been around for a while, and the people around her are very familiar with their history. She discovers her attic is functioning/malfunctioning and gives her a steady supply of husbands – every time the present one walks into it, a new one comes out.

The way she deals with this situation is downright hilarious, but also opens up a lot of questions. As Lauren tries to work through how the attic might be doing this, and goes through her seemingly unlimited husband buffet, the author spectacularly examines the paradox of choice where the abundance of husbands makes her more picky, choosy, and irritable. A lot of the fun was in her increasing desperation to get reluctant ones to climb up into the attic, and I have them bookmarked to read again and again. The fun part aside, there’s also a heavier side to the story which examines the loneliness she faces being the only one who is in on this truth, and the lengths she would go to to kind of convince herself that she should keep one or another husband. This slowly takes her on a journey of self-discovery that makes the story relatable in more ways than one.

CONCLUSION: In short, this book is right up there with the freshest, funniest, and most thought-provoking books I’ve read. I don’t recall another book making me crack up like this one did, and at the same time had me marvelling at how clever it was. Highly recommended.