Seven Days of Us

Olivia Birch has just returned to the United States following a humanitarian trip to Africa to help treat an epidemic. She faces seven days of quarantine....with her family....at the holidays. Seven days with her parents and sister without being able to leave the house. Family secrets, jealousies and squabbles all come to the surface as the Birches face Christmas together.

I can completely identify with uncomfortable, yet joyous, holidays spent with family. Tensions, past slights, and different outlooks often clash after a couple days. I can't imagine being effectively trapped with family for seven days, unable to leave the house. Oh dear. lol. This book is witty, often funny, emotional and completely enjoyable. I found myself caught up show more in the Birch family drama. It seems they all have something to hide and different reasons for keeping their secrets. The truth pops up at inopportune moments. But, the Birch family is strong....stronger than they realize.

I don't usually read this sort of fiction. It's usually just too much emotional fluff for me. But, I have to say....this book was a pleasant surprise! There is drama and lots of emotion....but the story is engaging, purposeful and believable. I found myself identifying with the characters and wondering how this story would end. I didn't feel bogged down in melodrama, but enjoyed this tale of a family coming back together after years of growing apart. This is definitely a great book to read before the holidays.

Awesome book! Emotional and witty without being overdone. I will definitely be reading more by this author!

**I voluntarily read an advanced readers copy of this book from Berkley Publishing via NetGalley. I also won a print ARC through Goodreads. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.** show less

A week is a long time to spend confined to your house as a family, especially if each of you is hiding something from the others. Andrew and Emma Birch and their two grown daughters are spending Christmas together for the first time in years, and because eldest daughter Olivia, a doctor, has been working among patients of a deadly disease outbreak in Africa, they will spend it in strict quarantine. And due to the things that each member of the family is not telling the others, it's bound to be anything but a calm, quiet week at the country estate.

I enjoyed this a great deal. The author does an excellent job with characterization -- I found my self both liking and being annoyed by each character in turn (though, of course, some annoyed show more me more than others!). She also walks a fine line with the possibility that Olivia might develop symptoms of the disease, finding ways to keep up the dramatic tension, when it might have otherwise evaporated. And all of that is balanced with plenty of pleasantly humorous moments. If you enjoy family dramas, especially set during the Christmas season, you'll probably find this to be just the thing. show less

The Birch family will all be together for Christmas for the first time in years--and they'll be spending it at their country house in quarantine as eldest daughter Olivia has just returned from a months-long aid trip to Africa to treat patients at the center of an outbreak of a hemorrhagic fever. As they are all cooped up together until Olivia is officially declared symptom free, their enforced proximity intensifies the pressure of the holidays--a situation made even more volatile by the fact that every member of the family is keeping something to themselves that they really probably ought to tell everyone about.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel that works like a character study of a family. All the characters were interesting and I show more cared about each of them (even the ones I found annoying). The tone is just the right mix of light and heavy--think a slightly heavier, slightly less overtly humorousThe Family Stone set in the UK rather than New England, and you'll about have it. Recommended if this sounds your kind of thing. show less

Family togetherness can be both a blessing and a curse. Once children are grown, families tend to gather together less and less and often only around the holidays. If you've just been with family at the holidays, you know how hard it can be to be under one roof together for an extended period of time. Now just imagine of you weren't just together but that you were quarantined so there was definitely no way to escape your loved ones, no popping out to grocery shop, no walk down the street, no outside contact at all. This is the situation in Francesca Hornak's novel Seven Days of Us.

The Birch family is about to spend seven days together in quarantine over Christmas. Eldest daughter Olivia is a doctor just returning to Britain after show more spending time in Liberia treating victims of the deadly Haag virus. She has to stay locked up for the seven day viral incubation period in case she comes down with the terrifying disease. Despite not returning home for the past several years for Christmas, this year Olivia will have more than enough time with her parents and her younger sister at their country place, Weyfield Hall in Norfolk, beyond the reach of good cell service and reliable wi-fi. Mother Emma has just been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma but she's keeping her diagnosis a secret, worried that Olivia won't come home if she knows what a danger her presence could be. Instead she's invested in being the cheerful, nothing's wrong, martyr mum as she caters to her family, trying to keep all their traditions alive, even if no one else cares much about them anymore. Father Andrew is snarky and emotionally distant. He's a former war correspondent turned unhappy food critic who is more than uncommonly unkind in his reviews. He's also harboring a secret this holiday season, having gotten two emails from a young American man named Jesse who is the product of a one night stand Andrew had in Beirut before he and Emma married. This heretofore unknown son wants to meet Andrew but Andrew's best defense against Jesse is to ignore the emails and definitely not tell his wife and daughters about them. Youngest daughter Phoebe is used to being the center of attention. She's the golden child. She's also self-absorbed, frivolous, and shallow and she's just gotten engaged to her long time boyfriend, who is a complete and total wanker. She's more consumed with planning her wedding and whether or not George got her the right earrings for Christmas than anything else (except maybe lording her most favored child status over Olivia) but under all of this bratty self-centeredness, she has a lingering sense that her relationship is not all it could or should be. Olivia should be the heroic figure, the doctor who risks her life treating others, but she's so condescending and intolerant of her family's affluence and traditions that she comes across as judgmental and sanctimonious. Like the others, she too is hiding something this Christmas. She's fallen in love with a fellow doctor and the two of them broke the strict "No Touch" rule they lived under in Liberia, a fact that she is at great pains to hide, especially once Sean is diagnosed with Haag himself and is splashed all over the media.

Just the secrets and lack of communication between the Birches, never mind their divergent personalities, means that spending seven days together with no respite will not be easy. This enforced family togetherness will challenge them, exposing the cracks in their relationships with each other, highlighting how little they share anymore, and showing how much they still have the capacity to hurt each other. But it turns out that it won't just be the four of them together as two other people show up unexpectedly and are forced to join in the quarantine, complicating the dysfunctional family dynamic even further and stressing things to the breaking point.

The novel is told in sections detailing each day of the quarantine and then subdivided into short chapters focused on each of the major characters in turn. As the days pass, the reader can see the frustrations rise, the lack of communication grow, and each character become more purely and stubbornly him or herself. The narrative starts off with some pretty huge, rather unbelievable coincidences but Hornak actually makes them work far better and less predictably than might have been expected. These coincidences don't stop as the story goes on, but by then the reader is invested enough in the outcome that it no longer matters. The characters mostly all start off as not very likable and while they don't change out of all recognition, each of them learns and grows and becomes a little more sympathetic during the seven days they spend together. The end of the novel could very well descend into a treacly disaster of a Christmas story and it is greatly to Hornak's credit that it doesn't, instead striking just the right note for both satisfaction and believability. A generally enjoyable read, this will make you cringe and laugh as you contemplate your own family quirks and conflicts and you'll find yourself grateful that you aren't likely to be (figuratively) locked up with them again until next Christmas. show less

Ooo… this was just terrific! It reminded me so much of an Elin Hildebrand book in the best way even though we’re not at the beach. You’ve got this huge family with all these damning secrets. They’re all stuck together for the holidays, and everything is about to EXPLODE. I LOVED the characters. You’ve got a daughter planning a wedding, her sister who just returned from treating a terrible epidemic and who may be contagious??, a mother and father with awful secrets of their own, and other people who may be showing up at their door. It’s just all the juicy makings of a great holiday drama-fest, set on the backdrop of Christmas in the English countryside. Love love love! The family relationships were what made this shine, for show more good and for bad. show less

Seven days of togetherness along with secrets and tension make up the Birch family's Christmas holiday this year.

Emma has a health secret.

Andrew has a really big secret from his past.

Olivia has something she has to keep secret while in quarantine.

Phoebe really doesn't have a secret but is very self centered.

Staying in Emma's family estate is a bit challenging since Emma doesn't like to change anything from when she spent time there as she grew up. Things are old and decaying, and the technological side of it is very slow.

I wasn't sure what this book was going to be like at first, but once each chapter began to reveal things about each character, it became a very good read for me.

I laughed a lot as well as worried a lot. The funniest show more thing was that each year they planted the Christmas tree back in the same spot and uprooted it again for the next Christmas. The worries about their secret were intense for some of the characters, and I worried along with them.

SEVEN DAYS OF US was well written and a light read even though some of the issues were not light. The family grew on me to the point that I would have liked to be quarantined with them.

An enjoyable read that will have you wondering what decisions you would have made about your secrets and situations. SEVEN DAYS OF US also has some heart wrenching events.

Excellent debut novel - marvelous writing and detail as well as a great story line. 4/5

This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher and NetGalley in return for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Also participating in the reviews for Great Thought's Ninja Review Team. show less

When Olivia, older daughter of Andrew and Emma, returns home to England for Christmas from battling an infectious disease outbreak in Africa, the whole family is forced into quarantine at their country home. During the enforced proximity, old resentments come alive, secrets are kept and then revealed, and all four family members learn more than they expected to about one another.

While this was a bit melodramatic and implausible in parts, I enjoyed the read (listen). Dysfunctional families often make for good entertainment, and this one certainly did. No one in the family is a bad person, but they are all rather self-centered in their own ways. Seeing them confront each other and their own pasts was both amusing and heartwarming.

A nice show more book if you want something seasonal without the romance of so many holiday reads. show less