Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

And more importantly, welcome to my review of my new favourite book of all time. Yes, you read that correctly! I have been waiting for a book to hit my feelings like a truck, and boy oh boy, this one did just that.

Seven days to fall in love, fifteen years to forget and seven days to get it all back again… From the author of The Perfect Find, this is a witty, romantic, and sexy-as-hell new novel of two writers and their second chance at love.
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. . .
With its keen observations of Black life and the condition of modern motherhood, as well as the consequences of motherless-ness, Seven Days in June is by turns humorous, warm and deeply sensual. (Synopsis from Goodreads.com)

This book was absolute perfection from beginning to end. It really is a true work of art. Tia Williams has created a near perfect story, with perfect pacing and writing, which all go along with wonderful new characters that readers become attached to right off the bat.

All of the characters in this novel pull all of the elements of the story together. The amount of characters in this book was surprisingly on the higher side when it comes to literary fiction/contemporary novels, but each character was important to the flow of the story. Even though Eva and Shane are the two main characters in this story, my favourite character was Audre, Eva’s daughter. She was very mature and incredibly self-aware for her young age, but she still had many juvenile characteristics which made her character seem so realistic. Audre and I shared a lot of similar traits when I was her age (at least from what I can remember), which made her character so enjoyable to me. Some of my other favourite characters were Cece, Eva’s editor, and Ty, one of Shane’s students. But of course, this story would not have been so great if I didn’t absolutely love Eva and Shane together as a couple, and as individuals. Eva and Shane are one of my favourite fictional couples ever, and each scene between them served as a masterclass for the perfect amount of lust, tension, and true love.

The writing style of this novel was one of my favourite aspects of it. Throughout the novel, there are many flashbacks to the time when Eva and Shane were high school lovers, and going through in immeasurable amount of harm and sadness. Both of them were addicts, and dealing with terrible home lives. At the same time, the reader is witnessing them re-connect after several years apart, and watching them fall for each other all over again as grown adults. The contrast between these two timelines was quite stark, but also very necessary to include to make sure that the reader understands how both characters have developed and grown immensely overtime.

Words truly cannot express how much I loved this book. I rated it 5/5 stars, but would’ve given it 500/5 if I could have! If this book interests you in any way, be sure to check it out at your local library or bookstore, as it releases in bookstores today! Thanks to HBG Canada for sending me a finished copy of this beautiful book!

Good Night Book Owls!