Seven Days in June has been on TBR for several years now and I recently got a copy on sale from book outlet. I’ve only heard good things about it, so I was excited to pick it up. I did end up enjoying it, but it was so much different from what I was expecting!

Seven Days in June is about two characters, Eva and Shane. Eva is a best-selling erotic romantasy author and Shane is a best-selling literary fiction author. They had a wild love affair as teenagers and have been secretly writing each other into their books for the past 15 years. When they meet again at a literary panel, sparks fly and the past threatens to catch up with them.

I’m not totally sure why this book surprised me, the synopsis totally delivers on what the book is about, but I guess I wasn’t expecting how much trauma each of these characters has been through. Eva has chronic headaches and was largely ignored by her mother growing up and abused by the cycle of lovers that passed through her mother’s apartment. Now she’s a single mom doing her best to provide a different life for her own daughter. Shane grew up in foster care, with so many failed fosters that he ends up in a youth center with absolutely no support. They both experiment with drugs and Shane winds up in prison for 2 years after being in and out of juvie.

In present day, they’re both accomplished black authors, but in very different realms. They were incredibly important to one another for that brief period of time as teenagers, and Eva questions why Shane dropped out of her life and disappeared for 15 years. As a recovering alcoholic, Shane doesn’t feel he has the stability to be there for anyone and questions whether he can even be a successful writer without a drink in his hand. They’re both still a bit of a mess, but when they meet again in real life, it’s obvious that their chemistry is undeniable. Are these two broken people finally ready to be together, or will they forever be a victim of circumstance and self-sabotage?

I thought the book had a really slow start. I actually put it down after 6 chapters and read a whole other book. But I’m glad I picked it up again because it gets really good after the first 100 pages. It’s obvious from the synopsis that this book has a lot of depth. Both characters are flawed and those flaws very much get in the way of their happiness. But the writing is really impressive because everything that happens in this book felt so genuine and I had no trouble buying into any of it.

The author is a very good storyteller. I think it’s challenging to read at first because you are walking into a narrative that’s already fully formed and you have to catch up with knowing what these two characters have already realized about each other. It’s hard to believe they could have such a connection to one another after just 1 week together, 15 years ago, which is why I think the writing is so impressive. I absolutely believed in these characters because their chemistry was undeniable. I believed they could have such a profound impact on one another, because they found each other at such challenging points in each others lives, and truly did save one another, despite all the crap they still had to suffer after.

I read Meet me at the Lake by Carley Fortune last year (and absolutely hated it, it’s unfair to even compare it to this), but my main criticism of that book was that no one would believe 2 characters could fall in love after just 1 day together, 10 years ago. But I guess Fortune’s storytelling was just bad because it totally worked in this book. I felt like these characters were magnets and I both understood their attraction, and believed it!

Plus, there was just so much other great stuff going on in the book. It’s not solely about these two characters. Eva’s daughter Audre was a great addition to this book as well. She’s a very self aware 12 year old that wants to grow up and be a therapist, and I loved how she was integrated into the story. I kept waiting for a disaster scene to happen between Audre and Shane and I loved that it never happened! It would have been so easy to write one in for the sake of drama, but I’m glad that the author understood that if Eva’s daughter didn’t accept Shane, then it never would have worked between them. Eva and Audre are compatible and Eva and Shane are compatible, so it was incredibly sweet to see them all fit together. 

The more I write this review, the higher my opinion of this book (I love when that happens). But it wasn’t without flaws. They are smaller criticisms, but there were two things I didn’t like about the book. The first is the use of narration. There are multiple narrators, but I didn’t like how minor characters sometimes got their own POV and I really didn’t like how sometimes the author would switch between different character POV’s in the same chapter. This wasn’t an omniscient narration, and I think it would have read better with just one character per chapter, and if it was limited to just Eva and Shane’s POV, and maybe Audre. I didn’t need the other characters and it made the entire storytelling seem a bit chaotic.

The second thing I didn’t like was the ending. The epilogue was not an epilogue. It was like an extended final chapter and it didn’t work for me. I felt it was unnecessary to drag the conflict out for an additional few months. I was glad to see Eva go off and start following one of her dreams, but I could have just been told she was going to do it, I didn’t actually need to see her do it. It’s a small criticism; overall I thought this was an excellent book.