The Husbands (spoilers and ending explained) | Holly Gramazio
Are you looking for a spoiler-free review of The Husbands? Head back to the main review. You can always return here when you’re ready to unpack the ending!
How did The Husbands end? (spoilers)
Lauren spends much of the book trying to find another Carter. In one of her lives, she actually travels to Denver to meet him again and try to engage the spark she felt. It doesn’t work. When they meet Carter isn’t interested and Lauren is finally able to let him go.
One of Lauren’s husbands is a man named Bohai who is going through the same experience as her, only he is the one going into the attics and coming down into a new life. Though they aren’t a good fit romantically (Bohai almost leaves right after coming down, which is how Lauren catches on that he is going through the same loops she is), they form a friendship as the only people who understand what the other is experiencing. They spend some time together trying to work out what they each want out of a marriage before Bohai departs. After he leaves to go find other new husbands (or wives, but Lauren and Bohai refer to all of the new mates as husbands), she begins cycling through husbands again.
Lauren eventually gets Michael (the first husband) a second time, and it’s a great life. It’s the life she would have if she did everything she should do (she works out regularly, eats well, sleeps at a regular time, has gotten promoted at work). But when she gets a call to help Bohai out of a bad situation with his latest husband, it means the end of her relationship with Michael and she has to let him go.
After this, Lauren cycles through husbands until she gets a husband who is injured coming down from the attic. He has to go in for surgery, which means Lauren can’t send him back. She stays with him through his recovery but after he’s healed, Lauren can’t get him to go back up to the attic. She has to resort to drastic measures (including firing an air rifle) to threaten him back up the ladder. After it works, she runs from the flat before the new husband emerges–sick over what she had just done.
Lauren realizes that she can’t keep living life like she gets unlimited do-overs anytime she messes up. Without knowing anything about her new husband, she sets the attic on fire and the building burns down, permanently shutting off her ability to change husbands. She then goes to meet her current husband Sam for the first time. The two sit and watch their house burn down, but they realize would choose each other rather than their material items every time.
What did I think about the ending of The Husbands?
I was a Michael-and-Lauren truther, especially after her second marriage to him where she was really happy with her life. I felt that Lauren could get there to fall in love with Michael. I was also a Carter truther for a good chunk of the book. Carter was the first husband she felt a spark with and wanted to keep, but he went up to the attic without her realizing it and she lost him forever. When she later looks him up in an alternate life and goes to meet him and see if there is a spark, he isn’t interested. This was a rare somber moment in the book, though Lauren moves on from it quickly (I suppose it’s easier to handle a break up when the person doesn’t know you were ever together and when you have an endless supply of automatic new relationships).
That brings us to Sam (I know what you’re thinking, “who??“). The reader only briefly meets Sam (the final husband) at the very end of the book after Lauren had already burned down the apartment. At first I wasn’t sure I liked the ending. After all of that we get a random unknown husband? I wondered for awhile if she was going to go through with the divorce of Amos (her ex-boyfriend who arrives as her husband twice) and go back to dating and potentially getting married the traditional way. I don’t think that would have been the fun ending that we got, but it would seem like the less drastic way of closing the loop (the more drastic way is of course burning down your entire flat and all of your belongings to accept a new husband site-unseen).
After I thought about it for a day or so, I realized that this was the perfect way for Lauren to end her story. At first I couldn’t believe she closed the attic off before seeing what her new husband is like (especially since the previous husband was such a dud). Then I realized that if Lauren met the husband, she wouldn’t be able to resist giving herself the option to exchange him, and inevitably she would do it when something goes wrong. She’d stay in the loop of new husbands and never give one a chance. By taking a new husband without meeting him first and closing the loop, she’s giving herself the chance to try this marriage to someone who at least one version of her thought was worth marrying.
It seemed that Michael represented the person who was almost a perfect match, but something was missing. Lauren would have a good life with Michael, but she was playing a version of herself that matched Michael, but that version wasn’t her true self. She wanted someone who accepts her as she is. Carter seemed to represent “the one that got away”, and she can’t stop comparing each new husband to him. Carter was the dream, but when she meets him again, there isn’t a spark. They don’t really know each other and the few things she does know about him don’t necessarily build a romantic connection. She is finally able to let him go.
Sam was intentionally vague. We know he loves Lauren, and they have a sweet ending scene sitting and looking at the ashes of their home. But ultimately we are leaving the book the same way Lauren is–not know if Sam is her perfect match, but trusting that he is a great match and there is a reason she chose him in that version of her life.
