Skip to main content

Review: Seven Days of Us

Seven Days of Us Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s Christmas, and for the first time in years the entire Birch family will be under one roof, but for a very specific reason. Elder daughter Olivia, a doctor has been treating victims of an epidemic in Liberia and upon returning home for the festive period, the entire family must now spend a week in quarantine. The decision is made to leave their London pad and spend the festive season in their run-down country pile, Weyfield Hall in Norfolk.

Cut off from civilisation and forced to spend time with each other, they soon discover their differences. Younger sibling Phoebe is obsessed with her recent engagement to George and life for her becomes mood boards and seating plans. The two sisters seem miles apart in personalities and interests.
Dad Andrew is a restaurant critic who longs for his former career as a war correspondent, but he is harbouring a dark secret that he hopes to keep from the family. Mum Emma is also hiding something and promises herself that she will reveal all after the Christmas period but until then, it’s keep calm and carry on.

But when a family is thrown into close proximity how long can secrets stay secret especially when unexpected guest turns up?
I really liked this story, it wasn’t a light and fluffy Christmas read, it was quite hard hitting, and although there were certain parts of the story that I’d guessed quite early on, there was another part that was so unexpected I was completely shocked and caught unawares! Initially I really didn’t like Olivia, I thought she was hard character who wanted everything her way and got the hump when people didn’t see life the way she did, but by the end of the book I had warmed to her and ended up adoring her when she showed her vulnerable side.
I felt the end of this book has lined up another one when we get to learn Andrew’s back story.

View all my reviews

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Weekend Away by Sarah Alderson

The Weekend Away by Sarah Alderson Published by Avon Books 4 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐ New Mum Orla and Party girl Kate have been best friends forever and so with Orla adapting to motherhood, and Kate facing a messy divorce, they decide to have a girl’s weekend away in Lisbon. Kate has booked the perfect apartment, complete with hot tub and they kick the weekend off in style with champagne, a fancy dinner, and drinks at a trendy bar. Returning to the apartment that evening Orla feels a bit woozy and goes to bed but the next morning, she wakes up very groggy and is convinced that her drink was spiked and she tries to piece the night back together again. When she checks on her friend, Kate is not in the apartment, and hasn’t left a note – she has simply disappeared. As Orla frantically retraces their steps she makes a series of discoveries that may change her life forever. The main character in this book is Orla who is been married to Rob, together they have baby Marlow who they conceived with IV...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Life Interrupts Reading (And Why Books Always Wait For Us)

I've been very quiet on here over the last 18 months. Reading, something that usually anchors me, slipped quietly into the background, not because I didn't love it anymore, but because life asked me to put my energy elsewhere. The main reason is my mum. She's 89 and I adore her. Following a dementia diagnosis, she moved into residential care, a road I never imagined navigating, and one that came with a steep learning curve. In the early days there was a small silver lining, her care home was close enough that I could pop and visit her every day during my lunch hour and those visits mattered more than I can put into words. Over the last year though, her dementia has progressed very rapidly. There was pneumonia, and then on Christmas day sepsis. And as if that wasn't enough, a relative made the decision to move Mum to another care home further away from me, but nearer to her, meaning that I can no longer see her every day. Losing that routine felt like another quiet grief...
Post a Comment
Read more

Summer Wedding by Sarah Morgan published by HQ Books

  When Adeline receives a wedding invite to her mother’s fourth marriage on the island of Corfu, she despairs and makes the decision not to go, until her father, talks her round! Adeline’s half sister Cassie lives life through the pages of a romance novel the type that her mother, bestselling romance author Catherine Swift writes and she can’t wait for the nuptials. The invites though hold a secret…who is the mystery groom and why all the secrecy behind him? This story is told from the perspective of the two daughters and their mum, and although you will probably guess the twist (I did!) it certainly doesn’t distract from the story and the wonderful description of Corfu and it’s scenery. I initially started this book and then stopped it and read another book in between and now looking back I’m not sure why I did that because when I returned to it, I couldn’t stop reading it!! I also read this when I was lying in bed with Covid, and it transported me on a holiday to Corfu exac...
Post a Comment
Read more