*I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*
Title: Seven Days of You
Author: Cecilia Vinesse
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 9780316391115
Synopsis from Goodreads:
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?
I definitely struggled a bit with this book. I really wanted to like it because it sounds like a story that’s right up my alley. But alas, I couldn’t get on board. First of all, the main character’s name is Sophia, but her friends insist on calling her “Sofa” which I found a bit juvenile and intolerable. I found the friendships in this book to be quite surface level and difficult to connect with. There are love triangles and secret romances that make this book more like a soap opera than a YA fiction. And yes, while these are both tropes of YA fiction, I felt as though they were far too dramatic to be taken seriously. I mean, as a bit of light fluff, this book was great. It was easy to read, quick, and had some very sweet moments in it. I did really like the unique plot, but the YA genre as a whole is such prolific genre at this point, that this kind of plot elements seem to be over done.
This book is set in Tokyo, but I didn’t really feel like there was much of a point to that. I was super excited about this setting because I’ve always had a big interest in Japan and I thought that this setting made the book really unique. It’s nice with all the YA out there to see a setting that’s a bit different. It’s such a vibrant culture and a beautiful place, and I feel like the author could have incorporated that in a really rich way. But it easily could have been set anywhere modern and urban. I didn’t find any defining features where this book NEEDED to be set in Japan. I think that perhaps the author just likes Toyko and thought it’d make a cool setting for her story.
Lastly, I cannot get past this cover. Nothing on it hints to the plot or the setting in anyway. The cover could have been really unique to highlight a story that’s different and has a very cool setting. But design dropped the ball and put a very boring, same-old same-old couple poorly Photoshopped onto a generic bustling city street. Nothing about this cover makes me want to pick this book up.
Overall, this book was a disappointment for me. Some elements are in place to make this a great story, but it fell short on so many levels. I can’t say I’d recommend it.
Worn Pages and Ink 