Library Loot Review: Seven Days in June

If there is anything that will make me not want to read a book more it's the celebrity book club endorsement. The minute someone tells me I "have" to read something is the minute I stop being remotely interested. Which I realize makes no sense given that I've been posting book reviews online for 23 years. So yes even though Reese said I should read Seven Days in June by Tia Williams, and I saw other romance bloggers talking about it - I didn't take the plunge and whip out my library card until I read Whiskey's review. And you know what? I had some issues (hello, me) but I got sucked into this like whoa!

Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica author with a legion of fans obsessed with her fourteen book series about a dysfunctional relationship between a vampire and a witch. She also suffers from  debilitating migraines, a traumatic past she's been sweeping under the rug, and has a career crisis looming before her. She's a week away from her deadline on Book 15 in her Cursed series and...nothing. She's got nothing.  She's got a daughter to raise and food to put on the table, and while the film rights have been sold it's a question of will the movie even get made? So to drum up some buzz, her editor talks her into filling in on a "state of Black authors in publishing" panel - and oh, no worries, you're only replacing Zadie Smith. It's so not Eva's scene but she looking down a long, dark tunnel to ruin, so she says yes.  What she didn't sign up for was her traumatic past to come waltzing through the door.

Shane Hall is a reclusive, literary darling. After years of numbing himself with drugs and booze he's finally sober, taking temporary teaching gigs and trying to save kids just like him. He also fears his writing days are behind him. Now that he's sober? Yeah, the words ain't coming. But he's sober and wants to stay that way, which means coming to grips with his past, and Eva Mercy is that past. Fifteen years ago, as two extremely messed up high school seniors they spent a dysfunctional, drug-fueled week together before it inevitably imploded.  They both turned that pain into their writing.  Eva's been writing about Shane (hello, the vampire to her witch) and he's been channeling Eva in his celebrated literary masterpieces.  Now here they are, together again and it sets Black Book World on fire.

What I really loved about this book was the world building (so fantastic!) and the nuanced, multi-dimensional characters. The story does jump timelines and there is some chapter-break head-hopping, but it's a rich world that Williams has created populated by dynamic characters. I do think Shane takes somewhat of a back-seat to Eva, but that's what makes the story work. While there is a romance, and a happy ending, I'd classify this more as women's fiction with a strong romance arc. Eva's journey is what's truly driving the bus here.

However, I have quibbles. There's some kind of irony that during the author panel that sets this story into motion that Eva and fellow panelist Belinda (a poet) talk about how people only want books/movies/etc. about Black pain and suffering and this book?  Um, it's about Black pain. The traumatic pasts of Eva and Shane are front and center. What saves this from being Trauma Porn is that it's not the sum total of who Eva and Shane are and there are touches of humor laced throughout the book. I never set this book down feeling depressed or despondent. The tone is hopeful.

But...

It's also a clearly dysfunctional relationship between Shane and Eva for a very, very long time. The flashbacks to their one week in June as high school seniors you've got Eva gorking herself out on drugs to pain manage and cutting herself (again, pain management, plus her completely jacked up life with her Mom). Shane is a foster kid who deals drugs, partakes in his own product (plus alcohol) who has already spent time in jail. They don't fall in love so much as fall into a completely unhealthy, codependent relationship with each other. When they meet again as adults, with their unresolved baggage and lack of closure, all this "stuff" is a very large elephant in the room.

Eventually, however, I felt like these two get to a healthier place. And to do that? It all needs to go down the crapper...again. They need to break the cycle, the codependency, and while part of that is done early on because Shane is now sober, it's not really addressed until near the end of the book - which makes this heavy-lifting a bit rushed. I wanted to close the book thinking "these two are really going to be OK together" and I got to about 90% instead of 100%.

A few other things of note that stood out for me, the book is worth reading regardless but there's a scene between Eva and her daughter Audre when there's trouble at her elite private school that is one of the finest scenes in fiction I've probably ever read.  The relationship between Eva and her mother Lizette is fraught (this is putting it mildly) and I really appreciated this wasn't hand-waved away in the final chapters and everybody's one big happy family in the end (child, please). 

But...

While the life as a writer stuff is good, and mostly genre positive, there's a dig at the end that the romance genre reader in me found highly annoying. I don't feel like it was necessarily the intention but the message comes off as "shed your genre past to move on to become a fulfilled writer/person" and....baggage I haz it.  Which brings me to my final point - as much as I enjoyed this book it's also the kind of book that tends to annoy me in that there's a subset of reader who will wax poetic about how amazing it is and it's not like one of those "trashy Harlequins" as they sneer at the historical romance I'm reading with the clinch cover on the front.

Sigh.  But that's on me - not on the book Williams has written. And while yes, it was endorsed by a celebrity book club, at least Reese has enough sense to lean in on genre. I'm more than half-convinced it's why her book club has translated so well at least in terms of library demand and usage.

In the end I saw flaws in the story but I was so captivated by it that what flaws I saw were minor annoyances more so than a bridge to far. Was this a perfect read for me? No. But I inhaled it and what I loved I really, really loved. A book club read I would happily have deeper discussions about because there's a lot to chew on.  

Final Grade = A