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 her older sister, Olivia, deals with the culture shock of being immersed in first-world problems.
Their father, Andrew, sequesters himself in his study writing scathing restaurant reviews and remembering his glory days as a war correspondent. But his wife, Emma, is hiding a secret that will turn the whole family upside down.
In close proximity, not much can stay hidden for long, and as revelations and long-held tensions come to light, nothing is more shocking than the unexpected guest who’s about to arrive… (Pub Date: Oct 17, 2017)
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.
This was a mix of genres and predicaments that didn't go well but it's still enjoyable. Very quick to read and hard to put down.
Olivia has a lot to deal now she's back from Africa to spend Christmas with her family: her younger sister who acts like the baby of the family, her mother who unknowingly to her has just found she has cancer, her father who also unknowingly to her received an email from a son he didn't know he had saying he'll visit him and the whole quarantine the whole family needs to submit themselves for seven days. On top of that, her secret lover has been diagnosed with Haag and Olivia isn't feeling too well herself, though with so much stress the cause could be any other.
I did like this novel, it had lots of irony and some interesting plot twists, plus it kept me reading. Still, even though I couldn't actually put it down, I was mildly disappointed in its development.
It took me a while to point out what kept bothering me. There were some suspects, Olivia is a terrible character, I tried hard, I understood her, but I couldn't like her at all. But the rest of them were okay, I actually liked Phoebe despite all of faults.
The story also tended to repeat itself a lot. Something would happen and then as the point of view changed, we'd get a whole report on how the other character felt about it even when it was more than obvious. Thanks to that, inevitable events, like Jesse finding the main characters, took half of the book to happen. While it did make me turn pages to reach that point, the merry-go-round of events made me frustrated. All the time, I felt like Shrek's donkey, "are we there yet?"
The big issue, I finally found out, was that the genre wasn't solidified. I'll explain. This book was classified as humor. It does have a lot of funny and ironic moments but I didn't laugh out loud in any scene. They were supposed to be very funny but the impact was softened thanks to all the drama that was usually happening at the same time. Books can cross genres, I'll all for it. Take The Heart's Invisible Furies, that was super dramatic but other times I laughed so loud I choked. Seven Days of Us failed to mix everything. I didn't laugh, I didn't cry and whenever I felt curious about some mystery, it took me back to another point of view of some random event instead of going forward.
Still, despite the unfulfilled promise of humor, this was a good novel. The story opens eyes to the work of doctors in infected zones, with details subtly given by the author without in any form sounding like a pamphlet. It also deals with culture shock—more exactly, the reverse culture shock. I'm sure this is good food for thought if you want to pick it for a book club or a buddy read. Perhaps, it mixed too much tragedy for such a presumably light story, also discussing homophobia, cancer among other hard issues.
It's not a book I'll forget so easily but I'm afraid it's also out of my top 5 to recommend this year.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment