Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
3.5 stars
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
When Eva Mercy was little, her mom had told her that Creole women see signs.
Seven Days in June was the story of two high-school kids who didn't have the best home life finding each other for a week and then losing each other for 15yrs. Genevieve Mercer suffers from debilitating headaches and the stress of having an unstable home life doesn't help. Her mother Lizette lives a nomadic life going from boyfriend to boyfriend and as Lizette ages, the boyfriends and paid apartments get shabbier and shabbier. When they're in D.C., Genevieve decides to try and make a friend and picks the loner boy on the bleachers.
He'd never composed even one sentence sober, and frankly, he was scared to try.
Shane Hall has went from foster home to foster home and doesn't want to be bothered by the new girl trying to make a friend, until they start talking and he ends up in a fight for her and they runaway for a while together. They had a drug fueled, emotionally open, and deep connection week until they get pulled apart but Genevieve never really knows the answers to the why and what happened after her mother comes for her and she found Shane was gone. Shane has sobered up and with two years of sobriety under his belt, he decides to reconnect with Genevieve.
They'd stayed out of each other's way for fifteen years.
Genevieve now goes by Eva Mercy and is a popular author of a supernatural erotica romance series about vampires. When Shane shows up at a panel she's at, the connection they had 15yrs ago, is instantly back, along with the pain of not knowing why Shane left her. Shane says he's there to make amends and when Eva's daughter gets into trouble at school and Eva has to ask him a favor, they're back in each others lives.
“We have unfinished business,” he said. “You know we do. We've made careers off it.”
If you're a writer, I feel like you need to read this story immediately, the way that Eva and Shane (Shane's a popular lit fic writer) communicated with each other through their works and wrote out their emotions was so good. The scene, around 30%, where they call each other out on this was chef's kiss, the intensity and passion, GAH. In fact, in the beginning, the chemistry between Eva and Shane was sparking hard, they're a little raw nerve and, you can tell, excited thrilled to be back in each others company. There's also numerous shout-outs to the literary world and general, what I see as, writer's world emotions. The story is told more from Eva's point-of-view, so we know more about her and then it periodically jumps back to give readers flashbacks of Eva and Shane meeting and a few high emotion scenes of their week together. The pain and anger comes from Shane disappearing on Eva and Eva and the reader don't know the full story until later in the book, around 70%.
“I'm not just writing about you,” said Shane. “I'm writing to you.”
If you've ever read a Sonali Dev, I'd say this was close in story and tone of hers, there is the romance but, especially Eva's background family life, and Shane's childhood, play a big part; they're well rounded out characters that deal with trauma (self-harm plays a big part in both characters) and that personal journey shares equal footing with the romance, if not eclipsing it at times. I was reading this with more of a romance view and the ending kind of lost me because of this, Eva's self-journey takes the spotlight and I thought this lead to a fizzled out, less firework romance ending that I was personally looking for between these two.
There was Shane. Exasperatingly handsome in a dark tee, dark jeans, and three-day stubble---and gazing at Eva like she hung the goddamned moon.
The relationships between all the characters felt real and I did feel encompassed into this world. Eva with her daughter Audre will make you desire such a relationship with your mom, that scene where Eva calls out everything she's done for Audre to have the life and opportunities she had, hit so hard and good with the different generational view points. It felt right that Eva's relationship with her mother never got wrapped up with a bow (I would have liked Audre learning more about the true Lizette) and while I felt it deadened the romance for me some, I liked the personal journey Eva went on, in fact, could have read a book about her visiting all those places. Shane gets a little eclipsed by Eva, I felt this was more her story than his or theirs, but he's impactful. I would have liked a couple more flashbacks, him getting sober, from his point-of-view and while there was an incredibly sad moment for him, I don't think it hit as hard as it could because he wasn't as dived into as Eva and the relationship involving the sad moment wasn't as developed.
There was a lot here for people to relate, commiserate, feel, and cheer for and it also delivered some deep emotion, memorable scenes, and steam. The ending got a little more away from the romance than I would have liked, there was some outside planning to ultimately get these two together that I would have rather come from them directly choosing, but the idea of two authors writing to each other because they're not emotionally there yet to be together, beautiful story.
