2020 has started, and I’m so excited to sink my teeth into the opportunities (and the books!) this year has to offer. While traveling over the Christmas 2019 season, I forgot my reading material at home, but I’m very fortunate that my family members always buy me books as presents (’twas the season to overstuff my bookshelves and beam with fanatical pride as they groan under the weight of my intellectual wallpaper). One of the books I was given was Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak. Initially I thought it was just going to be this adorably cloying novel about a dysfunctional family, maybe with a snarky bite. I was proven correct in the best way.
Plot summary
It’s Christmas, and for the first time in years the entire Birch family will be under one roof. Even Emma and Andrew’s elder daughter—who is usually off saving the world—will be joining them at Weyfield Hall, their aging country estate. But Olivia, a doctor, is only coming home because she has to. Having just returned from treating an epidemic abroad, she’s been told she must stay in quarantine for a week…and so too should her family.
For the next seven days, the Birches are locked down, cut off from the rest of humanity—and even decent Wi-Fi—and forced into each other’s orbits. Younger, unabashedly-frivolous daughter Phoebe is fixated on her upcoming wedding, while Olivia deals with the culture shock of being immersed in first-world problems.
As Andrew sequesters himself in his study writing scathing restaurant reviews and remembering his glory days as a war correspondent, Emma hides a secret that will turn the whole family upside down.
Worth Reading
If you’re a fan of Sophie Kinsella novels, Seven Days of Us is right up your alley. It’s cute, it’s fluffy, it’s adorable and genially harmless as far as domestic drama novels go. Honestly I gave this book a try because it’s not my usual fare and, while I enjoyed the experience of reading Seven Days of Us, the finer details haven’t stuck. That’s totally fine! Not every novel you read will dig its fingers into your brain matter and throttle the sh*t out of your subconscious while you’re trying to sleep for the next decade. Sometimes you just need to read a book that will pat your hand lovingly and go gently into that good night when you’ve closed the back cover. Hornak has a talent for writing characters you might know in real life, but they’re not so vivid as to make you feel squirmy about the human condition; they’re more like distant friends you might meet up with once every few years for old times’ sake, where the memories of them leave more of an impression than who they are now.
Flaws
Honestly I don’t have any complaints. If this book was trying to be serious or say something meaningful, we’d be having a different conversation, but it’s genuinely just a novel you can wrap yourself up in for awhile with a cute cover. You can’t ask for much more than that.
Rating
3/5
Jalapeno Chicken Wraps
Comments are closed.