Seven Days of You by Cecilia VinessePublished by: Poppy on March 7, 2017
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 336
Source: NetGalley
Book Details
Rating: ★★★
Sophia has seven days left in Tokyo before she moves back to the States. Seven days to say good-bye to the electric city, her wild best friend, and the boy she’s harbored a semi-secret crush on for years. Seven perfect days…until Jamie Foster-Collins moves back to Japan and ruins everything.
Jamie and Sophia have a history of heartbreak, and the last thing Sophia wants is for him to steal her leaving thunder with his stupid arriving thunder. Yet as the week counts down, the relationships she thought were stable begin to explode around her. And Jamie is the one who helps her pick up the pieces. Sophia is forced to admit she may have misjudged Jamie, but can their seven short days of Tokyo adventures end in anything but good-bye?
Seven Days of You was… okay. To be honest, I think Tokyo was my favourite part about it. The setting added something extra to the book, and I think without that unique element it would have gotten a lower rating from me.
The very nature of the book (“seven days”) is a bit insta-lovey. But I also think Seven Days of You tries to do something that’s very hard. It tries not to be insta-lovey because Sophia and Jamie have already known each other for a while prior to the book starting. So in a way it’s not “love in seven days”; it’s “love in seven days after a long history of friendship”. But the problem is, the reader wasn’t there for that friendship so it still feels a bit like insta-love.
My major gripe with Sophia and Jamie is at the beginning, I didn’t get the impression that Sophia and Jamie used to be best friends. In hindsight, I’m paranoid that maybe I missed that part, but in my memory I just see Sophia acting like she and Jamie happened to hang out in the same circle of friends, and then Sophia started hating Jamie because they got in a huge fight. But I never got the impression that they were super close. Then later on, Sophia started acting as if they had been best friends before the fight… It was a bit confusing and, unless I did miss something, inconsistent.
I think that weird inconsistency made me distance myself from their relationship. I was never super into it, which was a bummer since it was such a huge part of the book.
My other gripe was that the characters could be kind of annoying. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to give them a pass because they’re teenagers or what.. but ugh. Sophia had this friend named David who was an actual legit total asshole. She had a crush on him and I was just like, why why why. Total dick. Then there’s this scene where Sophia gets angry and takes it out on someone and says mean things, while her internal dialogue is all like:
“Inside I was begging him, Please know that I’m lying, please know that I’m lying, please know that I’m lying. But outside I wasn’t saying anything at all.”
So she blatantly lies to someone just to piss them off for no reason, and internally she’s shouting, “Please know that I’m lying!” Stupid stupid stupid.
But hey.. despite my gripes it was still a cute book. There were some tough family issues (one in particular that was really sad!), the setting was very cool (though more would have been nice), and although I wasn’t totally sold on the romance it still had its sweetness.
im super excited to read this because a book set in tokyo intrigues me so much!!! i hope it is as good as i am expecting it to be, so fingers crossed! great review ashley!