Medium: Audiobook
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Length: 10 Hours 32 Minutes
Rating: 5/5
Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York.
When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can't deny their chemistry - or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.
Over the next seven days in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva's not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered...
When I say wow, I mean WOW! I have read a lot of romance novels in my time; hell I have read a lot of romance novels this month, but this is now in my top 10 romances of all time list. Everyone who reads romance loves a good fluffer-nutter of a novel that is all love and personal conflict and little else. The kind of story that allows you to turn off your brain and just be. This is not one of those stories and it makes the top 10 list because of it. Although I adore a good fluff piece, the romance that has a lot of message to share behind the love story are always the ones that hit hardest for me. While I want the romance to be central to the plot still, when there are bigger themes and conflicts that are being addressed in the B-plot, I find myself more engaged in the story. Tia Williams struck the perfect balance in Seven Days in June between the romance of Eva and Shane and the social commentary on motherhood, being Black in creative spaces, struggles with addiction, and growing up in broken homes. This book packs a punch from all angles.
Creative Story Structure
I am notorious for loving stories with multiple POVs. While this is no exception to that rule, Williams plays with traditional POV and story structure in a way I haven't seen done before in traditionally published works. It is something I call "Third Party Plot Advancement" and I see it a lot in FanFiction writing. This is where, in a traditionally single or duel POV story, random scenes will be written in from an outsider POV in order to give the reader information either separately from the main characters or without the main characters' emotional input. Williams does this quite a few times throughout the story. While we are mostly in the heads of Eva and Shane, once every few chapters we will hop into the head of Cece, Audre, Lizette, or even once Ty. By using this technique, the narrative never suffers from any repetitiveness on the part of our main characters.
Allowing the reader to see the emotional impact or struggle of a situation through the eyes of a fellow observer places the main characters in the wider context of their world. We now know that Cece is rooting for our couple and is willing to meddle because she sees through their, frankly terrible, casual fronts. We now know that Audre loves and respects her mom above all else, even when she is at odds with her. We can now really, really hate Lizette all on our own without any influence from Eva. (I mean really hate her, she is the true villain of this story in my opinion.) The main reason I adore this story structure is that it lets the main characters spiral in their thoughts without the reader getting bored. No one can sit through an entire book of "I love him, but we can't/shouldn't be together, but I love him" internal dialogue without coming out of it kind of annoyed at the character. This beautifully avoids the issue while actually adding substance to the story overall.
The other structural choice Williams made was to sprinkle in the flashback scenes throughout the entire story. Not only do these scenes last all the way up until the last few chapters of the book, but they do us the service of showing instead of telling. Every jump to the past arrives to tell us the most reverent information just in time for that information to impact the present-day story. The first time we hear from Genevieve we have no idea she is Eva, but it is revealed to us in the next present-day chapter. We see the first interaction between Shane and Genevieve right before they reunite, building the tension up even more than it already was. We get to see their story play out instead of having them tell it to us inside their own heads. Which relates back to what I was saying before about monitoring the amount of emotional input the main characters have on the readers. By utilizing flashbacks, the character's hindsight only comes into play when it is relevant instead of coloring the entire story. For me, it keeps the whole thing more engaging from start to finish.
B-Plot Buffet
As a connoisseur of romance novels, I have very specific wants that have to be met for a romance book to be a five-star read for me. One that falls short a lot of the time is an engaging B-plot with a greater message that doesn't overshadow the A-plot. A lot to ask, I know, BUT when done right it makes for a scrumptiously good read. Seven Days in June does nothing but deliver on this. While the romance still stands as the center of the story, the background plot lines are plotting.
Motherhood
The theme of motherhood is one of the strongest plot lines in the book. Shown from four different angles across three generations, Williams really dives into the struggles and hardships that come along with being a single mother to a daughter. The subtle juxtaposition between Lizette and Eva's relationship and Eva and Audre's says so much without the readers having to be explicitly told. We are shown the struggle of trying to do better by the next generation and, in Eva's case, attempting to break a generational mold. From the daughter's perspective we also get a look into the pressure to either reject the lifestyle example given or perfect the lifestyle example given. It is a glimpse into a topic that is often felt, but rarely talked about.
Growing up in broken homes
Again, Williams hits us with every angle she possibly can. Every person presented in this book has come from a different kind of fractured homelife. We get a range of coping mechanisms, reactions, and choices from pushing to get into an Ivy League school to numbing with substance abuse to psychoanalyzing the lives of everyone around you (because, yes, even Audre is coping in her own way). With varying outcomes, Williams gives us the for-real, non sugar coated versions of where nature, nurture, and choices can lead you.
Generational Trauma
Tied into the previous two themes is this overarching concept of generational trauma. Much more subtly incorporated, the B-plot of the story constantly hints at the issues that can arise due to past trauma. The focus of this is on Eva's family line, but it is present in all of the characters to some degree. I feel like we get the best example of this during the Black authors panel scene when Eva describes the roles that each of the panelists place themselves into. It portrays the effects of generational trauma mixed with centuries of societal oppression that even in a place filled entirely with peers, they fall into stereotypes. I also think this is the main theme that Williams was tackling because of the ending to the story. Eva's choice to forgo writing book 16 of her uber-popular erotica series in order to pursue writing a book about the women in her family and their stories shows the beginning of a person's attempt to unpack their own generational trauma. It also hints at a want for connection to the lost stories of a scrubbed out group of people. The epilogue placing this storyline alongside Eva and Shane finding their way back to one another again on their own terms is the perfect show of healing.
If you can't tell, I really loved this book. Like, finished it in two days, loved it. Not only did it end up on my top 10 romance books list, but it might be a top 10 read of the year as well! (It always makes me nervous when one of those happens so early in the year. Sets high expectations...) Now, I would love to hear from you! Have you read Seven Days in June? What theme stuck out to you the most? I didn't even touch on it, but how much did you love the real adult communication between Shane and Eva?
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it obviously!
That's all for now,
Keep wondering and stay wandering!
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