Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

 

Summary (from the publisher): Seven days to fall in love, fifteen years to forget, and seven days to get it all back again...

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 novelist, 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 buried traumas, but the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that 15 years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. While they may be pretending not to know each other, they can't deny their chemistry - or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books through the years.

Over the next seven days, amidst a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect - but Eva's wary of the man who broke her heart and wants him out of the city so her life can return to normal. Before Shane disappears though, she needs a few questions answered...

With its keen observations of creative life in America today, as well as the joys and complications of being a mother and a daughter, Seven Days in June.

Review: This was a moving second chance romance about two best-selling authors who reconnect at a literary event. Little do their fans know, but they fell in love as teenagers and have been writing secret Easter eggs into their books referring to the other for years. For one perfect week, they were in love as teenagers and then never spoke again for fifteen years. Now that they're back in touch, they can't deny their chemistry, their history, and the way they're still drawn to one another after all this time. 

I liked a lot about this. Love that they are two black authors. Love that this includes chronic illness representation, as Eva suffers from debilitating migraines. I love the history these two share and how they met and fell for each other so many years before. I was so into how they had been reading each other's books and including little nods and references to each other all those years in their books!! Insanely romantic. 

I did think the third act breakup was unnecessary and not as fleshed out as it could have been. It just didn't feel like it warranted a full breakup and seemed like a simple misunderstanding that got blown out of proportion for the purposes of tension. This was wonderful on audio, but I did think Eva's daughter came across as really annoying and wheedling. I get she's supposed to be a precocious 12-year-old, but it was a bit heavy handed. 

Stars: 4