A whirlwind romance in Japan that is swoon worthy. A great read that is perfect for a summer beach read.

Honestly couldn’t get past the fact that this was set in Tokyo and yet every character was white and American.

Unfortunately I no longer wish to review this book as the first few chapters did not reel me in. Thank you for the opportunity.

Didn't get very far into this book before DNFing. I'm very picky when it comes to contemporary and after the first few chapters, I wasn't interested in reading further.

Unfortunately I really wasn't a fan of this book. I didn't like the main character, Sophia, I did not like either of her love interests and the story was just overall generic and forgettable. The setting in Tokyo had so much potential but was wasted. It felt like they could have been anywhere; apart from a few references to places and Japanese food, the location and culture really weren't explored, at least not as much as I expected. What's worse was that none of the main characters, or really many characters at all, were Japanese. I was so disappointed by this decision and it really made me wonder why the book was set in Tokyo at all.

Overall, a premise that had potential ultimately failed on execution with unlikeable characters and poor utilisation of the setting.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Full review on my blog and amazon to view my feelings on how awesome it was. Thank you for review book.

Brilliantly written and just gorgeous. I want to know more!

I ❤ Japan.

Ok, so I’ve never been so I cannot know for sure. But I love what I’ve seen and heard about it, and one day (hopefully sooner rather than later) I will go there. So this ingrained adoration of Japan, and especially Tokyo, was what drew me to this book. Was it everything I hoped for?



Welp, it definitely rekindled my wanderlust. However, I wouldn’t call it an easy read, but I’ll detail why.

Overall plot – I enjoyed the concept of this very much. The idea that Sophia’s send off is completely “ruined” by the return (and welcome) of a guy she has somewhat of a complicated past with. Complicated because they parted terribly.

Here’s the blurb, FYI:

Sophia has seven days left in Tokyo before she moves back to the States. Seven days to say good-bye to the electric city, her wild best friend, and the boy she’s harbored a semi-secret crush on for years. Seven perfect days…until Jamie Foster-Collins moves back to Japan and ruins everything.

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. And Jamie is the one who helps her pick up the pieces. Sophia is forced to admit she may have misjudged Jamie, but can their seven short days of Tokyo adventures end in anything but good-bye?

Relationships – I really dug the dynamics between the characters. Whether that be on a friendship level or a romantic one. It was really cool to see these explored.

Setting – YAAAS BISH! It’s TOKYO! Oh my days. I loved the setting. How could I not? And I think because I’ve watched many video on YouTube and done a shit tonne of my own research on the place it was really exciting for me to recognise the places and the words. #accomplishment – I know stuff.

The downside? Even though I found this to be quite the page turner, I did find it lacking in clarity in places. There were moments that took a couple re-reads to understand what was going on. I’m not sure if it’s because it was so quickly expressed, or if it was just that I had a wonky ARC (the e-galley I had wasn’t the best. The punctuation was all skewed) but some parts that I knew were supposed to be real heavy, or poignant, lost their momentum because the exposition wasn’t entirely clear.

That said, would I recommend this book? Heck yeah. If you enjoy reading about different countries and want a taster of the kind of culture and way of life in Japan, then this book will do that. It doesn’t get deep into it, and I don’t think it needed to. But it was just enough to keep me excited about it.

Emotionally driven, it’s a fun read. I say “why not read it?” Karaoke bars, cool settings and KISSING! What more do you need?

I am not going to be reviewing this book, but thank you for the approval.

I received a copy from Netgalley.

I sort of liked this one and I sort of didn’t. I’m somewhat torn on what to feel about this book. It’s somewhere between a 3 star and 2 star read for me. The Anna and the French Kiss comparison is what made it snag my interest. Sofia has spent the last few years of her life in Tokyo at an international school with her best friends David and Mika. She has a gigantic crush on David. Her mom is a professor at a university in Tokyo. Mom has been transferred back to the United States. Sofia, her older sister Alison and her mom are leaving in seven days. Sofia has seven days to pack up her room and say goodbye to her friends.

Most of this book is pretty much teenagers being teenagers. Sofia is supposed to be packing, but she hangs out with her friends, enjoying the delights of Tokyo, partying, karaoke, staying out way late and lying to your parents about where you are, and crashing at her friend’s house, arguing and making up. And to add to the drama the friend Sofia fell out with years ago, Jamie, is back in Tokyo. She really liked him, but he was jealous over her crush on David and said something he shouldn’t have creating an argument that cost their friendship. Jamie’s good friends with her BFF Mika, and Mika insists on dragging Jamie along on their escapes. Friday is Mika’s birthday and with Sofia’s going away so there is a huge party. Not helped either by the fact that David’s sort of girlfriend Caroline has attached herself to their group even though no one really likes her that much. Typical teen drama.

Unfortunately, I found David and Mika to be some of the most incredibly annoying characters I’ve come across in a while. David is loud and arrogant, and I just don’t understand Sofia’s obsession with him. He nicknames her “Sofa” which is stupid and irritated the hell out of me. Mika came across to me as selfish. She’s very loud and foul mouthed, with a decent creative streak, she had her moments, but there were plenty of incidents where she and David were really crappy friends to Sofia. Which lead to Sofia being really hurt.

While at the same time all this friendship drama is going on, Sofia is having family drama with her older sister Alison. Their parents are divorced, their dad lives in Paris with his new wife and new family. Sofia is given the opportunity to go and live in Paris with him for her senior year rather than go back to the US with Alison and her mom. Which causes major drama between Alison and Sofia as something like this has happened before and it didn’t pan out. Sofia was hurt and never quiet dealt with it.

When friendship drama with Mika and David hits a sour note, Sofia finds herself turning to Jamie, even though they had a massive argument years ago, they seem to have been able to move past it and grow closer, Sofia realises her feelings for Jamie may or may not be stronger than friendship, and she may not be the only one who feels this way. Made all the worse by the fact that the clock is ticking down to her leaving time.

Jamie was a much more likeable love interest than David. He was a nice, considerate boy, who talked to Sofia like a real person, he had his own problems and secrets, and tried not to let the drama have much of an effect on him. He was almost bordering on shy when he came in to the novel, he came alive more and more as the novel developed and showed more of a personality, particularly when he was hanging out with Sofia and their friendship became something more.

Sofia had a believable tone of voice and was actually quite likeable. She could be very immature and irritating, for sure. But she had some very deep emotional moments as she dealt with her feelings over leaving Tokyo, returning to the states, working out her true feelings about her father’s flakiness and if she still wanted the dream of living in Paris. The hurt she experienced when her friendships fell apart, and the romance as it developed between her and Jamie.
The constant drama did get a bit annoying, and I really did not like David and Mika at all. I did like Sofia. And thought it had a decent ending, a believable one as well, given the dramatics of the novel.

I can’t say this is a contemporary I would read again, but I would definitely read something else by this author.

Thank you to Netgalley and Hatchette Children’s Group for the review copy.

I do enjoy a good book set in a foreign land, and the Tokyo setting was the main draw for me on this one. Sophia's last days in this city are a love-letter to the strange land, and I was hugely interested to read about the locations and culture, but the story itself didn't quite grab me as I'd hoped it would. The characters were a little two-dimensional, taking a back seat to the setting. A sweet and interesting story, but one that lacked a little realism and life.

Not for me - I loved the setting, which was very original for American contemporary YA, but I couldn't get along with the characters.

I don't really know what to say about Seven Days of You by Cecilia Vinesse. I was really looking forward to it as it sounded so good, but I finished feeling really let down.

Most of the characters are unlikable. You don't need to like a character to enjoy a story, but there was may one character I liked out of them all, Alison, Sophia's older sister, but that was only sometimes. Most were either not very nice people, or just bland. I didn't like Sophia, either, she could be so cruel at times.

And then there's the romance itself, which I simply didn't believe. I didn't feel it. Sophia went from hating him to liking him so quickly; you don't spend three years hating someone, only for them to say sorry and suddenly everything is ok and the hate is gone.And I didn't believe that they fell in love over seven days. Maybe I would have if we got to see more of the conversations they had when walking around Tokyo, instead of just being told they walked around Tokyo for hours talking. What I did see didn't feel like enough for the romance to develop as quickly as it did. And it's not that the book took place in seven days - I completely believed the romance in Just One Day by Gayle Forman, and that took place over one day. It just didn't work for me, here.

I did like what we learnt about Tokyo, but we didn't get to see a huge deal. Again, there was a lot of walking around that we didn't actually see. The book is supposed to be the author's love letter to Tokyo, but we don't really see a huge amount of it. And one of my main problems is the lack of diversity. It's possible that Sophia's friend, Mika, is biracial; half-white-American, half-Japanese, but that isn't made completely clearly. It's like it's hinted at, but that could just be me reading too much into things, looking for diversity. If Mika is biracial, her father is the only Japanese character to have a name. The only one. And if he's not, then there are no Japanese characters in this book except in the periphery; people Sophia walks past, or accidentally bumps into, or buys things from. And considering this is set in Japan, I think that's terrible. I know this is the story of an ex-pat, and all the friends Sophia has are from her school for ex-pats, but she doesn't know anyone in Japan who's actually Japanese? No friends, no neighbours? Not one single person? I find that surprising and unrealistic - how can you live in a country and not know anyone from there? It's just not possible - but also hugely problematic. This book is set in Japan, where are the Japanese people?! Their absence is not ok.

Nor am I impressed with Sophia, who was born and raised in Japan until she was five, and then came back to Japan four years ago, and yet only knows the the most basic Japanese. It was never the plan to move from Japan when she was five, it was only after Sophia's mother got a job in the US that they decided to move, but up until then, until issues came about, the family were living in Tokyo with no plans to leave - I would have expected that they help their children learn to communicate with the people whose country they're living in. I cannot believe that for those first five years of her life, Sophia parent's only spoke to her in English - especially considering her mother is Polish and her father is French. Surely they would have talked to their kids in Polish and French, and English and Japanese?

So not only does Sophia not know anyone who's Japanese, she can't really communicate with them either. Surely I can't be the only one who thinks this is just awful?! Why right a story where your main character is completely cut off from the people around them. I can't help but think if a Japanese person/someone with Japanese heritage were to read this book, they would feel insulted by the lack of Japanese people, Sophia's failure to get to know any of them, or to actually try to learn to talk to them. Japanese is one of her classes at school, for crying out loud! I'm really not happy or comfortable with any of this.

This book just wasn't for me, I'm afraid. And as I can only give a "maybe" about any person of colour being in this book, I can't in good conscience recommend it.

Loved this book so much, it was perfect. Definitely my favourite read so far this year. Here is my full review on my blog http://www.isthisreallife.co.uk/2017/03/book-round-up-3.html

Post reading thoughts: Absolute perfection!

I’ve come across a handful of books this year which have completely taken me by surprise, I’m pleased to say Seven Days of You was one of those books. I remember reading the blurb a few months ago, thinking it would be the sort of book that I would enjoy and although it did take me a while to get into initially, on my train back home I was completely hooked. Vinesse goes above and beyond in creating a gorgeous read in the wonderful backdrop of Tokyo. I’m one of those readers that love to read books set in different cities; it makes the wanderlust within me want to come out in full force. And Tokyo really is one of the least expected places that I would have thought I’d want to go visit. But reading Seven Days of You really changed all that, it was clear to me that Vinesse really went all out with her research into Tokyo, the places she describes that our MC Sophia and her friends visit, the modes of travel and even the food, made me feel as if I was right there with these characters and I enjoyed every single moment of finding myself lost in Tokyo.

It’s sometimes hard to believe that this book is only set over seven days, as Vinesse packs in so much into this great book, it focuses on friendship, yearning, young love and having fun and adventures. Our characters Sophia, Jamie, David, Caroline and Mika had a lot going on, Sophia was moving back to the States, something she really didn’t want to do, having made such great friends over here and Jamie was on his back to Tokyo, having spent the last three years studying abroad. There was an underlying tension between Jamie and Sophia that we didn’t know a lot about, we didn’t know why Sophia wanted to avoid Jamie and it also seemed like there were a lot more secrets amongst this group of friends too. I really liked this mystery aspect of the story, of course I wanted to know what had happened between Jamie and Sophia all those years ago, because it was clear that there was something between them now and they only had seven days left together and so I really just wanted them to make the most of it. I loved the build up of discovering what had happened between Jamie and Sophia, and watching the way the group dynamics quickly changed in the last few days that Sophia had left here. Some of the secrets that emerged along the way I also weren’t expecting, but they contributed to the heartache along the way and making Seven Days of You more of an emotional read for me, which I enjoyed rather a lot. I enjoyed the carefree attitudes that Vinesse gave us in our characters, how Sophia although making some mistakes along the way, which I understood, really tried to make the most of her last week in Tokyo. It was about discovering yourself, having fun and making the most out of life. Sophia was a character who I adored, she had a lot to deal with, but I appreciated the little nudges she got along the way, how her family played a pivotal role in her life and the development of this story. She was a character that I could easily relate to having moved around quite a bit myself when I was younger, but she was also a character that you couldn’t but help want to do well and get the most of life. So you could say that I was a big fan of the turn of events in this book. The rest of the characters also bought so much to this beautiful story, Jamie and his curly hair definitely bought all the swoons, he quickly became one of my favourite characters. David, Mika and Caroline were also a complicated bunch, but were just so unexpected in their actions, that I loved having them pop up as I never knew what could happen next. I also need to mention Sophia’s family, every family has their ups and downs and so I really appreciated that despite some of the misunderstandings, they were there for Sophia.

Seven Days of You had everything that I love when it comes to reading, it had a wonderful setting in Tokyo, characters that had such complicated friendships, but withstood no matter what and the development of one of my favourite relationships to date. Vinesse’s writing and story building was wonderfully done that I really didn’t want this book to end at times, I would totally be up for a sequel too (pretty please) for me there could more development to come from the ending that we’re given. Seven Days of You has quite easily become one of my favourite reads of the year, I highly recommend everyone giving this book a go, you will not regret falling in love with these characters and gorgeous story.

This book had some cute moments, some awesome, crazy adventures in Japan, but it also had a lot of complicated romance. I wouldn't call it so much a love triangle as a ball of wool that has become so tangled up that untangling it is impossible and you have to resort to using scissors or just give up. Everyone in the book was in love with someone else and no one seemed to be in love with a person who actually loved them back. It's not the sort of romance that I enjoy and it just made me annoyed with everyone.

Sophia's attitude really bothered me. Her feelings for Jamie were obvious from the moment he arrived back in Tokyo and yet she continued to pine after David, who she never even told about her feelings. Her dismissal of David's girlfriend was the worst though. She completely ignored her most of the time, without even attempting to make her feel like part of the group even though the girl felt like things were a lot different. She basically didn't see her as a human being with feelings. I didn't like that and honestly wanted to slap Sophia half the time.

The book also had a lot of good parts though. It delved deep into how it feels for someone who is constantly shifted from country to country based on her parents whims. Okay not their whims, their jobs but still. It dealt with Sophia's feelings of abandonment from her father who has a perfectly stable life in Paris with his new family leaving no room for Sophia and her sister who are forced to move about between Japan and America with short holidays in Paris, never feeling like they belonged anywhere. This was all explored so deeply and I feel captured the feelings that these kids go through, though naturally I cannot say for sure because I've never been in that situation).

Also as I said at the start, fun, crazy adventures in Shibuya with Jamie and Sophia. Arcades, Karaoke and Ramen with a side of Matcha lattes. What more can you ask for in a date?

As soon as I heard about Seven Days of You, I knew I was going to love it. A contemporary book set in Tokyo over a period of seven days? Yes please!

The book follows Sophia as she enters her last week living in Tokyo before she moves back to the US. She has to say goodbye to her friends and to the city she loves, and she's counting down the seconds until it all comes to an end. Coinciding with her departure, however, is the arrival of an old friend and with him comes a last week that Sophia will never forget.

My favourite thing about Seven Days of You was getting to explore Tokyo through Sophia's eyes. Vinesse perfectly creates the setting so that it feels like another character and you become just as familiar with it during the course of the novel as you do with the other characters. As someone who has never been to Tokyo, I was a little nervous just in case I couldn't understand any references or inside-jokes, but Vinesse set me at ease immediately and invoked the atmosphere and culture beautifully.

The romance was so cute and I loved how it was based on friendship first, romantic feelings second. I think this kind of foundation is really important to see in YA, and made it a lot more believable. It was certainly a challenge building it up over 7 days, but Vinesse tackled it with an ease that carried through to the story - there was just the right amount of backstory, mixed with the same level of fresh content that played out on the pages.

There were also very interesting friendship dynamics explored, which I enjoyed reading about in the frame of Sophia's impending departure, and family relationships too. Sophia and her sister were great to read and I loved all their reactions - I thought they were so realistic and I liked how they changed throughout the course of the novel.

I read Seven Days of You in a day because it hooked me from the start - it was the perfect escapism. Cecilia Vinesse is an exciting voice added to the YA scene and I wouldn't hesitate to pick up any of her future books. In fact, I'll be keeping a beady eye out for any future book news!

For fans of Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Seven Days of You is about a seventeen year old girl called Sophia who has lived in Tokyo for most of her life, until now. She has a week until she has to move back to New Jersey with her mother and her sister Alison. A week left with her friends Mika and David and with the city that she calls home. However, just in time for her final week, Jamie returns to Tokyo after spending a few years away, and Sophia is not happy. Jamie is Mika’s best friend, and used to be hers, until just before he left, he did something to upset her. She hasn’t forgiven him, and it’s bad enough that she has to leave in a week without having to spend her last week with him. Unfortunately, I really didn’t like the characters in this book or the story, and apart from the references to Tokyo, there wasn’t much that I enjoyed about this book.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Sophia and Jamie get together (it’s kind of obvious). For me, it was all a bit weird. One minute Sophia was saying that she hated Jamie, and the next minute she was kissing him, and suddenly she loved him. I understand that the whole point of this novel was that there are only seven days, and so of course there would be a degree of ‘insta-love’, but this was just on a whole new level of fast for me, considering that she couldn’t stand him for about half of the week, so it wasn’t really seven days, it was more like three. The whole progression and history of this relationship just really ticked me off. I didn’t get it at all. Including their “history of heartbreak”, which I personally didn’t think was heartbreaking enough. When I did find out what the event that ended Sophia’s initial friendship with Jamie was, it just felt immature and like the characters, particularly Sophia, probably should have gotten over it by now.

This leads swiftly on to my second point, which is that almost every single relationship in this book annoyed me. Sophia’s friends are terrible people for most of the book, and I really couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see that for herself.Thankfully, Sophia does realise this around halfway through, which is nice, but then I didn’t like the way that she realised it! Much like her drama with Jamie, I really felt like she was getting angry and emotional at the wrong things and in a really melodramatic way. I felt that Sophia got angry mainly at one event, without seeing the bigger picture and realising that her friends just generally didn’t respect her or treat her in the way that she deserved. Although Vinesse did show Sophia’s friendships with Mika and Caroline developing and overcoming some problems, I would have liked to see the same thing with the relationship with David. Considering that Sophia goes some way to realising that she deserves to be treated better, I would have really appreciated seeing her facing the worst culprit, and also to see that worst culprit redeem himself a little.

There were thankfully some aspects of this book that I did like. I liked Sophia’s family, but I would have liked to have seen more of them. The storyline about her relationship with her father was really well done considering that her father only actually appears once in the whole novel in a phone call. I also liked Alison and the way that the sisters’ relationship appears cold on the surface but beneath that is really caring. I would have loved to have seen more of the mother, because I’m sure that she would be a great character. There was a point where Alison says that their mother doesn’t like them to do things that aren’t gender-neutral, which would have been something interesting to read about, and as a professor she could have been made into a character that is unlike most single mothers we read about in YA. I would have liked some more exploration of this family dynamic. Sophia at one point says that they’re like the three witches of Macbeth, and I would have loved it if they had felt like that, instead of three one-dimensional characters.

The setting was by far my favourite part of this novel. If Seven Days of You had not been set in Tokyo, I don’t think that I would have finished it, but Cecilia Vinesse does a really good job of making you feel like you’re in Tokyo. She described the hustle and bustle of the city really well. I could see the colours, feel the people rushing by, hear the sound of traffic, and I wish I could eat all the food that she describes. Everything in my head was in technicolour. I would have liked to have seen some Japanese characters, but I do understand the context of the characters all being students in an international school. I also enjoyed the constant countdown to Sophia's departure, and the idea that Sophia is living her life counting down to particular events, but is learning to enjoy each moment.

Unfortunately, this novel really wasn’t my style. I didn’t like the central relationships, either the friendships or the romantic relationship, and the only relationships that I was interested in – the family relationships – weren’t developed enough for my liking. The Tokyo setting saved this book from being a one-star review for me, as it made everything feel just that little bit more exciting and colourful.

Sophia is a young half polish, half French teen girl, with her dad remarried in Paris with a wife and two kids, she lives in Tokyo with her mum and sister.
Seven days before they're due to relocate back to another continent, David and Mika, her friends, inform her that Jamie is coming back home from boarding school.
This would be great if she and him got along, he knew how she felt about David yet he's loved up with Caroline, who is the opposite to our nerdy Sophia.
There are a lot of revelations about the relationships between the group of friends and more drama with Sophia and Alison's dad. It highlights how seemingly simple relationships can change over time whether you notice or not at first.
Watch for Jamie and Sophia too as they hang out more and the ending highlights that the end can still be continued on from in the future if you keep hoping.

Overall I really loved this book, plus, being set in Tokyo I loved all the references to their culture such as Pokemon, Totoro, Studio Ghibli and their various candies and games.

Thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review it!

I couldn't get into this book at all. The writing didn't flow well and the dialogue seemed disjointed. I was excited about the premise of the book but unfortunately it wasn't something I personally enjoyed.