Seven Days of Us by Francesca HornakMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
When Olivia Birch heads home for Christmas after relief work in Liberia, she dooms her family to spend seven days in quarantine. Can the family survive its own company?
This is not the type of book I usually read. The publisher contacted me and I accepted a print ARC for some reason. I'm quite glad I did.
Seven Days of Us is a tale about secrets, the secrets a family keeps from one another. Being locked up together over the holidays is like a steel cage match, even for a stiff upper lip British family like the Birchs.
Secrets can devour a person and the Birch family and their associates get hit by a swarm of piranhas. Illegitimate children, gay fiances, cancer, secret relationships, you name it. Some of the twists were predictable, unbelievable even. Others were like a punch in the groin. The last one was like bungee jumping, having the band snap, and landing on a mountain of broken glass. Once I got into the groove, I felt like Seven Days of Us was glued to my hands and eyes.
It's a compulsively readable book. The characters are well-nuanced and I couldn't wait to see what happened to them. It's begging to be made into a movie starring probably Colin Firth.
It's not my usual cup of tea but we all need a sip of Oolong instead of the usual Earl Grey now and then. Four out of five stars.
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