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." -Goodreads Synopsis
I had a lot of issues with Seven Days of You. When I received this book at BEA and read the synopsis I thought this was going to be a contemporary unicorn. Thought it sounded so good, unique, and oddly right up my alley. If you know me you know I'm picky about my contemporary books. Picking maybe 3 up a year, and this one had to be one of them. Sign, regret.
Our main character is Sophia or "Sofa", as her friends like to call her... Yep, you probably read that sentence and knew this was my first problem with the book. If they just called her Sofa once and awhile it probably would have been cute, but no they have to whine it every two sentences. After about 6 chapters of her friends calling her Sofa I was over it. It also didn't help her case that it took me forever to figure out how old she was. She dressed like she was 7 and talked like she was 10. This made me connecting with her almost impossible. She's clearly one of the love interest in a kind of love triangle. The love triangle was another issue of mine. Sophia's had school girl attitude with how handle relationships. Hearing her explain things was like listening to one of my nieces explain their elementary school crush playground fake boyfriends. Sophia is overall a selfish, clingy, and immature character.
“God,” I said. “I am actually a horrible person.”
You said it Sofa Super Store not us.
Not only are her "relationships" poor with her potential boos they are also poor with her best friend Mika. All Mika and her do are talk down on each other and other people. Struggled so much with understand Mika's character as well. Sophia would say that Mika would never do something, and then Mika would do it like it was second nature. It could be something as simple as "Mika never wears eyeshadow", then would cut to the next paragraph and it would say "Mika applies silver eyeshadow". Now on to the other sides of the tringle David and Jamie. Lord, I don't know how one would choose between complete dick bag or a guy who you stood up for hours. Here an idea, neither. They both kind of suck. Some will probably read this book and say I was hard on Jamie, because he is kind of sweet. Mainly picking on him because he is an exact replica of every ya contemp boy ever written.
Here is my last major issue with the book. The setting. 7 Days takes place in Tokyo, and this might be what shoved it so high on my tbr list. It's not often you get YA contemporaries set in Tokyo so this was suppose to be a nice added bonus... However, the setting is so poorly used. She could have easily have made the setting New York or Jersey and no one would be the wiser. She could have seriously ctrl f'd the whole book and changed the word Tokyo to New York and if you weren't told you'd never find out. You tell us you're going to give us this amazing, colorful, and culture filled landscape..... and then that's all you do; tell us. This was probably the biggest letdown, because I was truly excited for this setting. Also, she would overuse Japanese words and expect us to be okay with it. "Hey look I'm just throwing in a bunch of Japanese words, look over here and not notice how I'm ignoring the setting completely!". If that didn't have me wanting to set this book down the rest of the plot did. Nothing happens. I felt like this book wanted to be a book with all these fun sub stories with a lesson in self growth, but missed the mark. If you can think of a clique high school event that happens in any ya contemporary then you probably already know the plot of 7 Days.
Sadly Seven Days of You had the set up to be a summer fav but had a failure to execute properly. This book could have been good, but ended up wasting all its opportunities.
1/10 Stars
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