Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
Genre: NA Realistic Fiction
Blurb (on back of book):
Seven days to fall in love, fifteen years to forget and seven days to get it all back again... From the author of The Perfect Find, this is a witty, romantic, and sexy-as-hell new novel of two writers and their second chance at love. Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York.
When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can't deny their chemistry-or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.
Over the next seven days in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva's not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered. . .
With its keen observations of Black life and the condition of modern motherhood, as well as the consequences of motherless-ness, Seven Days in June is by turns humorous, warm and deeply sensual.
MY OPINION: ****
I see this book everywhere at my local bookstore and online. I didn't know anything about it prior to starting it and I'm glad to say I was pleasantly surprised. It's no secret that I love romance novels and this one, despite the difference in the conventional romance cover, was very similar to the ones I've been consuming like no other recently. However, this book centered on Black characters and highlighted important representation that is missing in a lot of today's most popular romance novels.
This book touched upon a variety of important issues in a delicate and thoughtful way while still keeping it very lovey-dovey throughout. The book focuses on the relationship between Eva and Shane but also digresses from them as a couple to a pinpointing of their specific individualistic traits. I really enjoy when a book doesn't merely focus on the relationship between two people and instead highlights the things that make them who they are aside from who they become with each other.
Eva is a single mother and famous fantasy-romance writer. She suffers from intense migraines, so much so that painkilling shots are everyday parts of her life. I really liked how the author portrayed her journey dealing with this pain because it was important but didn't make up who she was. I don't want to call out any other books blatantly but a few of the books I've read with this sort of pain/disease representation often choose to focus only on how the character suffers and deals with their affliction, rather than focusing on who the character really is.
Shane is an English teacher and recovering alcoholic whose best literary fiction works were written while he was drunk. His books focus more on slices of life and have won numerous awards, despite his elusive behavior with the media and public.
When Eva and Shane meet at a literary conference, their entire worlds come crashing down. The book covers two different weeks in June, one in the present and one from fifteen years ago in 2004 when Eva and Shane first met and fell in love (sort of) as high school seniors.
Now, normally, I'm not a fan of flashbacks. I think they ruin the flow of stories and are honestly kind of overdone and boring. However, I really liked the flashbacks in this book because we got to learn so much about who Shane and Eva used to be. When we come back to the present, their maturation and developments are clear to the readers. I kind of wish we had more of those flashbacks because those were oftentimes more interesting than the present-day chapters, if we're being honest. I would be so down to read a prequel going over Eva and Shane as young adults. It doesn't even have to be about their seven-day relationship but instead could focus on who they were when they were younger.
Eva and Shane both clearly have their own respective issues that they are dealing with and I liked how despite their problems, neither of them were made toxic or manipulative as is often the case with trauma victims in books these days. I liked Audre's character as well. I think she helped bring Eva and Shane together in a way while still being given her own voice and personality.
I would say to check trigger warnings before starting this book. I did not realize how dark it actually was. Based off the premise and the cover, I was expecting another generic romance novel but this book really focuses on a lot of scary and traumatizing things that I honestly wasn't ready for. I don't get triggered by anything but I think it's important to share to check TW for those who do. This is definitely not a rom-com. I would say it fits in the romance genre but also covers important contemporary issues.
For a while, Shane and Eva felt like right-person-wrong-time and I wasn't sure how I felt about that. SPOILER I'm not a fan of non happily ever afters in romance novels, so I'm glad this one ended the way it did but I was scared for a bit there. END SPOILER I do think the chemistry factor in this book didn't quite hit the mark that some other romance novel couples do for me, which would be one of my only criticisms. I wasn't ecstatic when they got together and didn't really feel the authenticity of their truly loving each other, especially since they only knew each other for seven days fifteen years ago.
The author has a brilliant way of spinning words into becoming so much more than what they are. The prose in this book is beautiful and I found myself highlighting more lines than I ever do (I read this book on Apple Books... no I do not annotate my paper books). I loved how the author framed each issue delicately and seriously and made each moment between Shane and Eva really count. The book is on the shorter side but no words were wasted in over-the-top, superfluous description, which we all know I am a fan of.
I also loved how this book touched upon sexism in the literary industry, especially for romance-novel-authors. I think this is a very true and not-talked-about enough topic in this world. As an avid romance novel reader (and budding writer), I think this is very true. It's difficult for a woman to like anything these days, but romance novels are stigmatized at this point as being a woman-only thing. Reading is reading, no matter the content, and I'm sick and tired of us romance-lovers and hopeless romantics constantly being stereotyped!
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I would recommend it to readers looking for a romance novel with a more serious tone than the generic rom-coms that are sweeping the genre right now.
Main Character: Eva, Shane
Sidekick(s): Friends, Audre, family, etc
Villain(s): Misunderstandings, alcohol, pain, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was all very real to life.
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