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Welcome readers, to another edition of #BlameAnne!  That’s right, Anne Bogel of What Should I Read Next Podcast introduced me to Tia Williams in episode 351 (along with TJ Klune, Andrew Sean Greer, and Brendan Slocumb – and I was today old when I realized how amazing and meta that is! #iykyk). Anne talked about Seven Days In June again with her guest during episode 354, and I was sold, and thus sold Ashley.  You know the sign that we’d arrived though?  It was a group text from a friend of the blog when she spied what we were both reading on Goodreads.  When another reader you know you have a lot of overlapping taste with is excited about a book, that’s when you’ve arrived, bookishly speaking!  

Seven Days In June is the story of Eva and Shane, two Black authors with overlapping professional circles, who write in different genres.  Shane is a literary fiction darling, who can only write when he’s wasted, except he’s sober now.  Eva is a paranormal erotic romance darling with a long-running series, a (mostly secret) debilitating chronic illness, a capricious tween daughter, and a bad case of writer’s block.  When they meet at a literary event, there are fireworks that unearth past trauma and gain the attention of their mutual friends.  For the next seven days, we follow these two enigmas through their reunion, and their past, learning who they were, who they are, and what that means for their futures.  

While Seven Days In June is technically a dual point of view open door romance, this is a serious, jam-packed title.  There is no fluff in these 336 pages, so if you’re thinking light and breezy or palate cleanser, save this for another time.  This book tackles serious issues including the foster system gone wrong, illegal drug use, the social hierarchy, prostitution, intimate partner violence, genre stereotypes, healing through writing, invisible disabilities, motherhood, sexism, and racism, all while having an intense plot and fantastic character development. Plus, it’s written with a direct, sassy, and open tone.  The characters are dimensional, and so thoroughly explored.  The easter eggs abound, which I just adored so very much seeing how they came back around with such genius, especially the ones I didn’t spy from the beginning.  

In case it wasn’t clear, I’m giving Seven Days In June a solid five stars. I’m likely to reread it, and I’m very interested in Williams’s backlist titles.  I do have one big complaint though.  These titles Shane and Eva wrote, I want to read them… all 18, but especially the one Eva writes after the curtain falls.  GAHHH why do authors have to tease us with books that don’t exist but sound so phenomenal?

What’s a fictional title you wish was real so you could consume it?

~Nikki 

PS: I didn’t even get to what an amazing window this is into the world of writers, the Black experiences of Shane and Eva and their supporting cast, in both timelines, or how amazing it was to read about a chronic illness on the page (amazing because I had migraines for years, and so many people just don’t get it).  

Darling Readers, as you well know there’s nothing that bookish people love more than books about writers, readers, and the bookish life in general. Tia Williams has catered to all of the above with Seven Days in June while still providing us with a fabulously sexy plot and a satisfying happily ever after. The University of Virginia grad started her career as a magazine beauty editor in 1997, pioneered the beauty blog industry with her award winning blog Shake Your Beauty in 2004, and is currently an executive copy director for Estee Lauder companies ALL while writing or co-writing six books since 2004’s debut The Accidental Diva. 2016’s The Perfect Find is set to be released on Netflix this summer starring Gabrielle Union and Seven Days in June is currently in development for a TV series by Will Packer Productions. Williams has been dubbed “a writer’s writer with a fashionista twist” and I have felt it in her descriptions of clothing, hair, and makeup, which gives so much nuance to her characters. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter and is currently working on her next two novels.

Seven Days in June was my birthday book this year. Not a gift of a purchase, but a gift of a read. I’m looking at my GoodReads start and finish dates and it’s January 23rd to January 24th and I’m not even a little bit sorry about that. This book sucked me into, as author Talia Hibbert said in her GoodReads review, “A VORTEX OF EMOTION.” Not only is the book’s structure a dual point of view, but it’s also a dual timeline for both Shane and Eva’s points of view. The way we as readers find out what’s going on in the present by visiting the past was a delight to read. Williams kept me sucked in from the very first chapter:

Eva had never set out for her name to be synonymous with witches, vampires, and orgasms. As a double major in creative writing and advanced melancholia, Eva had accidentally stumbled upon this life. It was sophomore year, winter break. She had nowhere to go. So she holed up in her dorm room, pouring her teen angst and horror-fan daydreams into a violent lustfest—which her roommate secretly submitted to Jumpscare magazine’s New Fiction contest. She got first prize and a literary agent. Three months later, Eva was a college dropout with a six-figure multiple-book deal.

The luck that we see Eva have in her career is exactly the luck that we want to see for ourselves in all of our writerly dreams, but as we dive deeper into her story, we find out about her invisible illness, the struggles she has balancing authorship and motherhood all while being available to her adoring (and sometimes overbearing) fans, and the secret book that she has been quietly dreaming of writing for her entire life. Another theme of Eva’s story is her place as a Black female writer in the Black literary community and within literary society in general. She wrote to keep her fans happy and her daughter fed and clothed, rarely getting invited to participate in the literary events where the book opens because of the genre of her writing. Eva is insulted and talked over by the male author on the panel, and it takes Shane – also a male author – to step in and ‘prove her worthiness’ by giving his opinion of her work. So not only are Eva and Shane having to work through the trauma of their pasts but also their problems with each other in their present.

I can not say enough good things about the way Tia Williams fits SO MUCH LIFE with all its trauma and tragedy and angst and lust and joy within Seven Days in June. Was it possibly the right book at the right time for me to give it a Five Star Review? Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t scoop up Williams’ backlist, recommend everything she releases in the future to the library, recommend this book to literally EVERYONE who loves the bookish life, watch the TV adaptation (because it better be as sexy as the book!) and quite possibly re-read it just for the tween, wannabe therapist’s heartbreaking insights.

Are you like me and give yourself the birthday gift of reading excellent books?

~Ashley

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