Book 26: Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
Updated: Oct 2, 2022
About the Book
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.
pre(r)amble
I absolutely loved this book and I have been dying to talk about it and review it but, mentally, i am everywhere lately. I feel like these past two months have been so freaking fast and I am finding that every day, I am losing all sense of time. I woke up last Tuesday thinking it was Wednesday and wednesday thinking it was Saturday (what an awful realization that was).
I feel like I've been giving myself so many projects and tasks that I overwhelm myself and I cannot focus. but when I have enough time to work on things, I am way to tired to do anything or, like today, I try to do everything all at once and it fails horribly.
the fact remains, that I've completely fallen off and since my last review, I've read three four more books and am currently reading three more and I haven't been able to get myself to finish any of them and I refuse to batch review so... here goes.
last night I had a dream, I got everything I wanted...
and everything I was hoping to find in a romance novel was in this book.
tension.
history.
longing.
spice 🥵
authenticity
everything.
and I think it was because Eva and Shane were so natural. so human. they had flaws. they had issues. they had secrets. and there were so many lines in this book that made me crave even an ounce of the passion and tension they had.
** kilig times a billion**
this book had so many moments that made me feel true angst in the way that I haven't felt in a long time. it reminded me of my first love -- or rather, all the good parts of a first relationship. the butterflies in the stomach, can't breathe, longing feeling that feels sooooo good.
"One thing," she whispered, her lips by his jaw. She didn't want anyone to overhear. "Before I forget." "What's that?" "Stop writing about me." Only Eva could've noticed the change in his expression. She saw the flinch. The slow, satisfied curl of his lip. His bronzy-amber eyes flashing. It was like he'd been waiting years to hear those words. Like the girl whose pigtails he'd been yanking during recess all year had finally shoved him back. He looked gratified. In a voice both raspy and low, and so, so familiar, Shane said, "You first." Williams, Tia. “You First.” Seven Days in June, 2021, pp. 70–71.
how can I fuck the feminine gaze?
I have had many a fictional crush, but there is no one I think I will love more than Shane hall. and, im gonna say it, men written by women... hit different. I don't think I have ever been so attracted to a fictional man in my life. even Stefano from shadow rider!!! (yes, I'm being sarcastic).
I think what makes Shane so appealing is a combination of several things: he definitely fits the sensitive bad boy trope with a sprinkling of intense passion and sharp wit; which, admittedly, I think I would find attractive in someone in real life.
and I think that is what has made quantifying this book so difficult for me. the raw nature of passion while confronting my own loneliness. I think it's the beauty of this book for me. it unlocked truly wholesome memories which had been clouded by awful ones in all the past romantic experiences I've had. it also gave me hope for a future with someone like Shane.
I saw a review my friend posted on Goodreads and she gave the book I think like 4 stars and in my head I was like how could you?! and in reading her review I think it made perfect sense. to her, she hates anything related to the miscommunication trope and, to be fair, the whole basis of this plot centers around so much miscommunication. normally, this would bother me too and it really shook me as to whether it affected my own rating of the book.
in the end, it did not. my rating this book a certified champ is, ultimately, I loved how this book made me feel. this book made me long for love again, in a way that I haven't truly felt since my own first love. and, while that scenario is completely out of the question, It made me eager to find an all encompassing, passionate, love again.