Seven Days Of Us by Frances Hornak

Seven Days Of Us by Francesca Hornak– Audio

Book Blurb:

It’s Christmas, and the Birch family is gathering for the first time in years. Emma is elated at having everybody under one roof, but her oldest child, Olivia, is only home because she has nowhere else to go. She’s just returned from treating an epidemic abroad and must stay in quarantine for a week – and so, too should her family. For the next seven days, no one can leave the house and no one can enter. It doesn’t sound too hard. But a week with your nearest and dearest can feel like an eternity, especially when they’re all harbouring secrets. One of whom is about to come knocking at their door…

My Review: 4 stars

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Seven Days Of Us is a story about family: the dysfunction, the crazy, the love and the support. A reader and close friend told me that it was like Jonathan Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You. I adored that book and was worried this would be a lackluster attempt to rewrite it. You can see by my review that this wasn’t the case; it was an enjoyable escape about a family that is placed under a forced quarantine.

This book didn’t have the humor that Tropper’s had; instead it had an interesting medical angle that allowed for another layer of strife between characters. One novel took place at a Shiva and one during the Christmas holiday. Besides those differences, both books bring out all the love, hate, jealousy, pettiness, kindness, fears, sibling rivalries, adoption and joys that being alone with family can bring out. I imagine that being under quarantine for any family for seven days, especially without Internet, is bound to bring out the best and the worst in people.

Although it was predictable with too many coincidences, it still was a very pleasurable read. I didn’t realize that Haag was a real disease that affected many places including Liberia. FYI, it stands for Hepatitis A Antigen disease. It opened my eyes to the selflessness of the dedicated doctors that work with infected patients, but also how it affects their own families. This would make a great holiday read.