Breakaway Books

Authored by Holly Gramazio; Published April 2024; Fantasy

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️

I cannot recommend The Husbands if you are in the throes of online dating. It presents a dizzying array of possible partners for the heroine, and it may make swiping on a dating app seem more daunting than it should be.

The Husbands starts with Lauren, the protagonist, coming home from a bachelorette party to discover a husband that definitely wasn’t there when she left. She realizes that every time her husband climbs up into the attic of her flat, a new man comes down—and thus begins her search through the endless supply of men her magical attic provides for the right husband for her.

When I started this book, I was very much in the mindset of The Good Part, in which the heroine gets only one unexpected husband after a hop into the future. But The Husbands is, tonally, completely different. There are lots of laughs, and it isn’t nearly as sentimental, but it’s hard to escape the idea that Lauren never quite comes fully to terms with what she actually wants in her life partner, no matter how many husbands she goes through. To me, it left a big gap in the novel, where just a little more would have gone a long way.

In some ways, The Husbands is reminiscent of Groundhog Day, as Lauren’s life resets in its entirety every time she gets a new husband. She continually skips work, spends down her bank account and basically does whatever she wants. It’s an interesting twist on the time loop concept that I’ve seen so many times in the science fiction genre, but I’m not sure Lauren ever gets to the level of enlightenment achieved in Groundhog Day. Still, it was hard not to laugh aloud at the strange quirks that some of her many husbands exhibit.

The best parts of this novel may be when Lauren runs into a husband who has her exact same problem in reverse—Bohai too is continually exchanging life partners as he climbs in and out of a cupboard. Her conversations with Bohai are some of the most revealing about her mindset on her husbands, and the contrast in their points of view is stark.

The Husbands was a lighter read than I thought it would be—fun, if not entirely fulfilling. If you love time loops, or have ever thought about all the different paths your life could take, you will want to pick this one up!