Seven days of you - Cecelia Vinesse

I was sent this by the folk over at NetGalley and I was super excited because TOKYO. I love all things Japanese. Like, hand me something Kawaii and I am all over it. I love anime, I love the snacks, I love it all so when I saw that this was a book about a girl leaving Tokyo I was like sign me the frick up.

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?

Ok. Where to start?
So, while there were a few things about this that made me roll my eyes, this was essentially a cute, teenage, angsty romance novel. If those are up your street, stick around because this is out at the beginning of March and you might want to know a little more about it.

Let's get the bad out of the way first shall we?
This is the story of Sophia, who though technically born in Japan, is from an American family who has spent her life moving around between the state and Japan, her dad has left the family and now lives in Paris and now having spent the past five years in Tokyo at a school she loves, in a city she loves and with a group of friends she loves, she is faced with having to move back to America, a country that she now has nothing but distance memories of. Sophia spends the first half of the novel upset about the fact that she will be leaving her two best friends, Mika and David and the fact that another of their friends, who had left for America a year ago on a bit of a sour note, was now back and diverting their attention away from her. That and she and him have history and she really doesn't have time for this when she is leaving in a week and is very sad about it. However, it doesn't matter how many times Sophia tells me she how much she loves Mika, I just don't believe it. They are awful to each other. We learn that she has long harboured a crush on David. David is also a horrible person who doesn't appear to really care about Sophia at all. The pair of them also for some reason call her Sofa... Which, like... is a bit of a weird nick name to give someone... Don't get me wrong, I love my sofa, it's very comfy and I enjoy sitting on it, but I don't think its a particularly good nickname for a person.
Aside from the fact that the group's friendship didn't come across as good as the narrator would have us believe, it doesn't make nearly as much use of the incredible city that is Tokyo.
Tokyo is known for being a vibrant, exciting city and really, this book could have been set anywhere and it wouldn't have made any difference. Tokyo could have been a central character in this book and it is really underused and being that I am so interested in the place and its culture, I think that's a real shame and it did hamper my enjoyment a little.

That said, if you ignore the gaping hole where Tokyo should be and the slightly toxic friendship group, this is a fairly enjoyable angsty teen story. You have a pinch of family drama (divorced parents, bitter older sibling, moving away from home), you have the school drama, you have the friendship drama (moving away from friends, realising they're already far away from you, people coming in and out of your life) and relationship drama (falling for someone when you're leaving in seven days is a bitch right?). It is a little generic, but sometimes that's all you want. If you want something easy to read, with a tried and tested formula that is entertaining and pleasant enough then this is the exact thing you'd look for.

Seven Days of You is released in March this year, so if you happen to have holidays planned this summer (lucky you) this might be something for you to consider, you always want something easy to read and a bit fun to take away with you!
Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read the book, and thanks in advance to the first one of you that can recommend me books set in Japan that actually takes advantage of its fascinating culture!