Loved this book! I had not read much of the blurb, so I was entirely surprised by the parade of husbands. (Publishers: might you consider not putting spoilers in the blurb?) The entire humorous and then darkly humorous journey was so engaging. Kudos to Holly Gramazio. I'm looking forward to her next book.

This book was just the distraction I needed. Work has been bonkers, my Mom has not been feeling well and reading is what takes me away from my thoughts for a little while.

Imagine a secret doorway of revolving husbands. Each one comes down full of possibility. Don’t like one? Send him back into the attic and get a new one.

Sounds awesome right? Well…maybe not so much. While it would be great to have a spouse that is perfect- that’s not the way life works. As the main character starts to learn, relationships are a give and take. Successful couples meld their weaknesses and strengths.

This book was a light and fun look at the possibility of endless choice. Each one also affected other parts of life including sibling relationships, friends and jobs. Where do you draw the line at what makes a perfect spouse?

I really enjoyed this one and felt like the ending was fitting. It brought the reader to a place of doubt and surprise.

Thank you to @netgalley and @doubledaybooks @penguinrandomhouse for the ARC to read and review.

Thank you net galley and publisher for this ARC. I really enjoyed this book and found it so interesting. I was immediately sucked into the story and very curious to see which husband was coming next and if Lauren was going to keep him or not. This was a quick read that I couldn’t put down.

The concept of this book was quite intriguing. Different husbands that came with a different life for the main character, Lauren. While fun at the beginning, Lauren came across so superficial and it was clear that no matter who stepped out of the attic she would find something to complain about. Granted there were some husbands I agreed she definitely needed to throw back. However throughout the process there was no true reflection on her part...did she make a good wife in comparison to those husbands? #Netgalley

The Husbands was an entertaining read with a very unique storyline. I did think it was a little too long, I think that the message the author was trying to convey would have been more impactful with a tighter storyline. I enjoyed such a unique premise though!

3.75 stars

In Holly Gramazio's THE HUSBANDS main character Lauren is single but finds that her attic creates husbands for her. If she doesn't like the husband the attic gives her, she can send him back up the stairs and a new one will come down.

This is a novel concept, and it holds most things about our world constant with this as the only change in the new world. So time moves as it normally does. Lauren has the same sister, best friend, neighbors, etc.

My main problem with this book was that I didn't like the main character Lauren. She was self-involved and not at all insightful for most of her journey, but she wasn't deliciously evil enough to root for either. The vast majority of the husbands were blink and you miss them. None of them captivated my attention, which was likely the point. There was one scenario that I really enjoyed. That was when she lands with an ex-boyfriend who has become her husband, and he leaves her right away. That allows Lauren to be on her own two feet withOUT a husband for a portion of time. I liked seeing her single.

I enjoyed the character of Bohai, who is navigating the same "problem" Lauren is, and he's a delightful friend (and role model) for the back half of the book.

I found the ending satisfying, as it does show a lot of growth in Lauren, but I'm not sure that ending has been earned. However, I felt happy as I closed the book, so the ending achieved what it was hoping to.

I think this novel is an interesting speculative fiction title to check out. It would be a good book club discussion.

What if your attic had a never-ending supply of husbands? I can't say this is something I've ever thought about before but it was a fun premise for a book. I felt like the first third (basically the set up) was solid but then didn't go anywhere very interesting. It felt a little flat. Maybe it should have been a short story instead? It didn't seem fleshed out or finished to me.

In the vein of The Midnight Library but with a romantic twist. Laugh out loud funny and a perfectly weird, lovely story for people who like their romance with a bizarro twist.

This book was CRAZY in the best possible way. Lauren comes home from a night out with friends and her husband is coming down the ladder from the attic--but Lauren isn't married. Who is this guy? And why, when she sends him back up to the attic to find something, does a totally different guy come down the ladder--and her world 'resets' to her married life with this new husband?

The book's premise works because Lauren totally believes it is happening--she doesn't (completely) freak out at each new husband (and she can send them back pretty quickly if they don't meet her standards) and all the while her life continues, changing as husbands come up and down the ladder.

It's a book about love and marriage, about figuring out what we want, about what we will negotiate to have the life that we think is the life we are supposed to have, and the importance of friends who stay with you for the long haul.

I really liked it.

I really wanted to love this book. I think the concept is so novel! But, it didn't work for me for a variety of reasons. First, just the sheer number of husbands made me manic. I would have much preferred there to be a half-dozen husbands that I cared about than 147 or however many there are. Also, I really wanted there to be a link between the husbands and her actual life. I think only one or two had connections to her life, and one was an ex that was not likable at all. Why did that one keep coming back? Finally, I just don't like Lauren by the end of the book. She actually seems to go crazy and then (spoiler alert) the book just ends?! There is no depth, and certainly not a happy ending. Maybe I am missing it, but this was a disappointing read.

The Husbands
A Novel
by Holly Gramazio
I did read the book in its entirety. It was just ok for me. Maybe for YA or 20ish. The humor was just too much, as in everything was a joke.

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio was a fun and intriguing book that drew me in from the beginning.

Our main character, Lauren, comes home from a night out and finds a strange main claiming to be her husband in her home. Lauren doesn't believe him until she sees the photos and all other conclusive evidence shows that yes, this man is her husband ... until he goes into the attic and a different husband comes out. It seems her attic is producing different husbands for her all the time.

Lauren keeps changing husbands and trying to keep them out of the attic when she likes them and wants to see where the relationship will go.

I've been married forever and I laughed at what I thought was this take on modern relationships and the ability to swipe one way or the other - or send them to the attic.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher. I really enjoyed this book and all opinions are my own.

Imagine it: you're living in London in a flat you inherited from your grandmother. You're single, and that's basically fine. And...then you come home one night and find a husband in your flat. A husband you've never met. And when he goes up to the attic for something, a different husband comes down in his place, and the world resets—and again, and again, and again.

That's where Lauren finds herself when this book opens.

I read this for the premise, and oh gosh, it did not disappoint. We've probably all imagined how our lives might have been different if we'd made a different decision here or there, and in "The Husbands", Lauren is living it. With each man who clatters down from the attic, not just the husband shifts but also the world around her: different jobs, different friends, different hobbies; sometimes a husband is just fine but in this world her relatives have made different choices that she can't conceive of living with; sometimes she's married into money and sometimes she's deeply in debt. Some things remain basically consistent, but sometimes things are...complicated.

And so the question goes from "which husband can I live with for the short term, just until my friend's wedding?" to "can I live with any of these husbands in the long term?" and eventually to "which version of my *life* can I live with?

There's a point at which Lauren's experience with the attic becomes something like Tinder brought to life. This husband is too tall? Send him back. This husband has a hideous moustache? Send him back. Yet another husband wants to watch "Mastermind"? Send him back. Gramazio keeps things moving, introducing a midway twist or two to keep the book from getting too predictable, but it's worth noting that Lauren's versions of her life are almost all very similar. In some ways the best part of the book is not what happens in it but the impetus to imagine the same version of one's own life. Like, for sensible structural purposes, Lauren's inherited flat keeps her mostly living in London, but I can imagine outcomes of my own life in which I was living in Berkeley or Raleigh or Vancouver or Boston or London or Cologne, to name a few. Oh, or Prague or Eugene or Toronto or...probably some places I've never been in this life. Saskatoon! There's definitely a version of my life in which I moved to Saskatoon.

Three things that I would have liked to see: first, Lauren ends up married to surprisingly few people she knows from real life, and that's kind of odd to me. She never stops to ask herself exactly how far back these possibilities go (is it only about decisions she's made since, say, leaving school, or do decisions her parents made when she was 10 factor in?), and although I don't think that would change things—it's not like she's going back in time—I have to think that there are versions of my own life in which I ended up entangled with someone I first met as a teen.

Second—and I can't actually ding the book for this, because it's clearly an intentional decision, and I understand why—the part of me that enjoys letting my imagination run away with itself wouldn't have minded Lauren's attic being more like Bohai's version of life...though to avoid spoilers, that's all I'll say about that. (But if there's ever a sequel...)

And third, while I again understand that this makes sense within the limitations of what's happening with the attic, I did think it rather a pity that every single outcome here seemed to revolve around which man some version of Lauren has married. And...it would be hard to go from outcome-with-husband to outcome-without-husband and back if sending the husband up to the attic is necessary to reset things, but in that hypothetical sequel, I sort of want to see outcomes (some or all) in which the heroine is living variations on the single life.

But all told, I had a fine old time with this—I loved the concept too much to be plagued by too many questions until I'd finished reading and started thinking more in depth about the "what ifs" of it all. I'll have to keep an eye out for whatever Gramazio writes next.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.