If you like cozy family dramas and a British and/or holiday setting, Seven Days of Us will hit all the marks. All together for the first time in years and confined to their country house while they wait out the quarantine period after Olivia, a doctor, has returned from working with an extremely dangerous virus, the Birch family know little about how to communicate with each other. Tack on a hefty dose of secrets they're keeping and seven days alone with each other, and family drama will clearly commence. As much as I love my family, I'm sure that seven days trapped together would result in just as many tears, hurt feelings, anger, and annoyance would feature in our confinment as did in this story, making it seem to be a truthful portrayal of life in a family that's, if this is a thing, normally dysfunctional. I enjoyed getting to know the Birches and reading as they got to know each other, and found this to be a generally charming character piece. The ending threw me, but not enough to ruin my overall opinion of the story. This will be a perfect winter read, one that's great to curl up and spend a cozy day reading.

This had the exact type of premise that intrigues me, I love reading about families, especially when there’s secrets involved and add in a little dysfunction and I’m all in! I adore my own family but being locked in a house for a whole week together sounds pretty scary and we’re not nearly as screwed up as the Birch family.

It’s told from every single family members perspective and I loved getting to see how each of them interpreted the same situations differently. Emma is the mom and while they all have secrets hers is a pretty major one. Andrew is the dad and he’s honestly pretty awful, he’s snobby, pretentious and detached as a father. Olivia is the oldest daughter, she’s a doctor and she comes off reserved and pretty cold and then there’s Phoebe the youngest, she’s basically a huge spoiled brat. I liked Jesse the most, he seemed to be the most down to earth and I usually gauge my likability of characters by who I would want to hang out with and he wins hands down. Overall a large cast of unlikable people that would’ve saved themselves SO much drama had they simply talked to each other, but where’s the fun in that?!

This was a really entertaining read if kind of ridiculous at times. The behavior of the Birch family ranged from appalling to mildly amusing and I was hoping for more sharp humor but instead it was more emotional than I think the blurb described it to be and definitely not exactly what I was expecting. The writing was solid though and it was fairly fast paced making it an easy read, this would actually be perfect to read over the holidays to escape your own crazy family! If you like books like The Nest you would enjoy this one, I had really similar thoughts/feelings on both of those books, a mixed bag where I can’t really say I loved or hated it, but I would say I mostly enjoyed it despite a few minor issues.

Francesca Hornak’s Seven Days of Us follows the Birch family as they are forced to spend the week of the Christmas holidays in quarantine in their Norfolk estate, Weyfield Hall. The Birch family — Andrew, a former war correspondent turned food critic; Emma, who put her dreams on hold to assume the role of family manager and caregiver; and their daughters, Olivia, a doctor whose work in Liberia treating victims of the Haag virus is the reason for the seven-day quarantine, and Phoebe, whose self-centeredness puts her at odds with her sister — are less than thrilled about being cooped up in the old house together.

Emma, whose memories of the old days prevent her from allowing improvements to her dilapidated family home, hopes that keeping to the family holiday traditions will bring them all together. But the rest of the family is just going through the motions. Andrew spends much of his time alone in the smoking room, wondering whether or not to respond to emails that are certain to further weaken his already tenuous bonds with his wife and daughters. Phoebe is focused on her relationship with George and their future, not understanding why Olivia is so sullen upon her return from Liberia and so serious about the quarantine. Olivia knows that her family doesn’t understand what she’s seen, and that they don’t really want to. Each one of them is carrying a secret that is bound to come out over the course of the week, and the stresses of maintaining normalcy are pushed to the breaking point when a stranger arrives at their door.

In Seven Days of Us, Hornak amplifies the challenges of celebrating the holidays as a family, especially when they have grown apart over the years. The quarantine keeps the family on edge and within the boundaries of the estate, when normally they would retreat when the going gets tough. Apart from an over-the-top coincidence at the beginning of the book, the story feels believable. Hornak does a great job telling the story from each character’s point of view within such a short time frame — the one-week quarantine — and keeping each viewpoint distinct. I felt like I got to know each character, understand their motivations, and watch them evolve and grow. It was hard to like these characters, but I became more connected to them (or, at the very least, grew to appreciate them) over the course of the book.

I enjoyed Seven Days of Us as a whole, as the characters and their secrets were interesting, the premise clever, and the pacing and flow spot-on. I definitely would recommend it for readers who like stories about family secrets and conflicts, and I look forward to reading more by Hornak in the future.

My Thoughts: I want to start out by apologizing to the writer and the publisher of Seven Days of Us, because I didn’t like anything about this book and I feel terrible about it. Obviously, I should have stopped reading early on, but it was sort of like a natural disaster – horribly fascinating. The premise of a British family being locked together for seven days over Christmas sounded intriguing, and with another family that might have been true, but not with this one.

I don’t even know how to review this one! Here’s a list of what didn’t work for me, and there WILL be spoilers.

Olivia, a doctor and the cause of the quarantine, doesn’t seem to like anything about her family, and yet there is never a case built for why. She’s condescending and unable to communicate.

Phoebe, her sister, has been dating a man for 6 years and hasn’t managed to figure out he’s gay even though I did in a few pages. She’s selfish and afraid of her sister (and I don’t blame her for that)!

Emma, the mom, seems to be nervous around everyone and came across as pathetic.

Andrew, the dad, just a blah guy who resents his life.

No one in the family cares enough about the others to even get angry.

Olivia (and everyone around her) needs to be quarantined, but she just flew across the world on a plane full of people traveling for the holiday?

Oops! Almost forgot, there’s a long lost American half-brother, who just happens to meet both Emma and Phoebe’s gay fiancé before managing to show up on the family’s doorstep. Did I mention he’s gay? (Hmmm….you connect the dots.)

Characters seemed like clichés and lacked dimension.

And, drum roll….the worst of all! Our heroine doctor, can’t figure out that the reason she hasn’t had a period in two months and keeps throwing up in the mornings, might be because she’s pregnant. She never even considers it. Instead, the morning sickness gets so bad that she has to be air-lifted out when everyone confuses her symptoms with the deadly Haag virus. Really!

Again, I’m sorry.

The Birches have much reason to celebrate this holiday season. Their daughter Olivia is coming home for Christmas, for once. Olivia is a doctor returning from a trip to Liberia where the Haag epidemic has been traumatizing and she is forced into quarantine for 7 days after her return. Joining her will be her mother, Emma, who is keeping a major secret so as not to ruin Christmas. Also present will be her father, Andrew, who writes a column reviewing restaurants and his secret from more than three decades ago will make an appearance. Then her sister, Phoebe, who demands the attention of everyone, still lives at home with her parents, and is planning her wedding during the quarantine. Can they get past the miscommunication and secrets to have a happy Christmas or will the secrets prepare for a battle of betrayal?

It took a long time to pick up speed. Little bread crumbs had been dropped along the way which did build up to the second half, however, the first half was so slow that I was tempted many times to move on to another book. Fortunately, I did make it through and it picked up very quickly after about 60% into the book. A great portion of it was predictable, yet the character development finally comes through and I could not put the book down.

I gave it three stars because I took one star away for how long it took for the story to pick up speed and therefore the amount of times that I was almost at the point of giving up. I took another star away because there were far too many coincidences with the characters and too many secrets that it became overwhelming at times. When Jesse met Emma, for example, and she reveals her secret to him, a stranger. Emma then went on to meet Sean, Olivia's secret. Jesse also met George, Phoebe's fiancee, randomly while on a walk and again randomly in a bar and discovered his secret.

I would (and have) recommended this book for those who have traveled to Africa and feel that the warfare and politics of Africa are far too easily ignored in the West. Additionally, for those who feel that the rest of the world groups Africa into one general concept rather than it being an entire <i>continent</i>. I would also recommend this book for readers who enjoy reading about family dynamics and secrets being revealed. Much like (one of my favorite authors) Liane Moriarty books, that are told in different perspectives and center around secrets.

I would not recommend this book for those who may be offended or triggered by: foul language, cancer, sibling rivalry, homophobia, infidelity, infectious diseases, and warfare in Liberia.

<i>Please note: an advanced reader copy of this book was generously provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review (thank you Berkley Publishing Group!)</i>

The Birch family is going to spend Christmas all together for the first time in years. They have planned to spend 7 days together at their aging family estate, Weyfield Hall, in the English countryside except some of the family members are attending unwillingly.

The eldest daughter, Olivia, is a doctor who has just spent months working in West Africa helping treat an epidemic and her return happens to coincide with the holidays. All volunteers must spend a week in quarantine just in case they have contracted the disease.

The Birch family matriarch, Emma, has taken this opportunity to plan a week long holiday for the family that never spends time together anymore. However before the week even starts, she receives terrible news that she keeps secret from her family determined to recreate Christmases from their past.

Andrew is the father who spends his days writing reviews of restaurants and feels uncomfortable at Weyfield Hall being Emma’s family’s estate. Andrew receives a shocking email before the week even starts that he thinks he can ignore and also keep secret from the family until it comes knocking one day during quarantine. Now he can’t ignore it any longer.

Olivia doesn’t spend much time with her family these days and it seems unthinkable to spend 7 days uninterrupted with them now. Especially when she finds out some troubling news about one of her fellow volunteers and she can’t tell her family how well she knows her co-worker. She tries to shield her family the truth while dealing with the shock of transitioning from w third world environment to first world luxuries.

The youngest daughter, Phoebe, is the only one not keeping a secret from the rest of the family but she very focused on planning her wedding next year to her new fiancé who incidentally is keeping a secret from everyone. When he drops by halfway through the week, suddenly he becomes part of the quarantine and family drama as well.

Seven days in one falling down, damp manor with all this family time and secrets. Which ones will come out?

Hornak’s excellent writing skills are on full display through this novel. The examples of Andrew’s restaurant reviews are evidence enough that Hornak knows her way around a pen. You feel like you’ve been transported to the English countryside with her spot-on descriptions. Every character comes to life and you begin to feel very early on that you know them all pretty intimately. She writes them in a way that makes you aware of all their faults but you still care for each of them individually and then you’re rooting for almost every character.

The family dynamics are so relatable. Every person is walking on eggshells to not offend another because they don’t know how to act together anymore or they’re just trying to be amiable to make it through their holdiay. Then Hornak tells you what the person is really thinking instead of saying and you find yourself thinking you’ve definitely been there.

This novel is light and funny in places and then turns serious as the relationships grow and the characters start to trust and depend on each other again. I’ll just say that when I started this book, I didn’t expect to be tearing up by the end. Character development throughout the story is incredible. The ending might not wrap up in a little bow like you might expect funny, family dramedies to, but, personally, I like when novels don’t have a perfect ending. You finish feeling satisfied while there are still elements that allow you to decide how they will turn out in the future. Seven Days of Us makes for a wonderful and festive holiday read.

Well guys, I’ve done it again. I have gotten sucked in by a beautiful, eye-catching cover and foregone the whole reading-the-synopsis-and-knowing-what-the-story-is-actually-about thing. I don’t like family drama stories where there is nothing but family members fighting and hating each other and guess what Seven Days of Us is? Family Drama and nothing else.
The problem with family dramas, for me anyway, is that the characters are never likeable and this held true with the Birches. Andrew, the dad, is in the midst of a big old pity party and is sulky and rude. Emma, the mother, whom I feel I should like is clingy and hopelessly lost in the past. Then there are the daughters. Olivia isn’t too terrible but she is very preachy and looks down on everyone who doesn’t sacrifice their lives for third world countries. And Phoebe? Oy, Phoebe is the worst! This is supposed to be a 29-year-old woman? She acts like an immature, selfish and irresponsible 15-year-old. Ugh.
The only character that I had any good feelings towards is a surprise plot twist characters that I cannot even mention here as I never want to post spoilers. I REALLY wanted to give up on this book about sixty percent into it but battled through just for this one character’s storyline…that’s it, that is all that kept even a tiny bit of my attention. I feel that only one or two of the characters really grew or changed but even they didn’t change into likeable people. Usually the reading for the beautiful cover thing works out okay for me but not this time.

Seven Days Of Us. So realistic, and heart catching. Imagine being quarantined with your family, what kind of truths would come to light? Would issues be resolved? Would you come out whole? Each of the characters and their issues are so realistic and timley, that when the story was done, I did not want it to be over.
Francesca Hornak, I truly hope you write more Novels, this one was awesome.

DNF @ 33%. Unfortunately I'm not interested in seeing how this story ends. I don't like how many POVs there are (5 for a contemporary novel seems like a lot) and it's just glum. I thought it would be family drama wrapped in a Christmas rom com and that's not the sense I'm getting at all. It's all a bit stilted and sad. Maybe it improves but if I keep finding excuses to pick up and read other books instead of this one, I don't think this is the book for me.

Can you imagine being quarantined with your family for seven days? First of all, I don't think that I would subject my family to the chance of catching a deadly virus from me. Secondly, I don't think I would subject anyone to a week locked in a house with me in a bad mood. And Olivia is in a bad mood.

She's distant from her family, and not excited at all to be home with her parents and sister. Olivia is a little bit (a lot) self righteous, and looks down on what she perceives to be superficiality or having lavish meals after spending the last few years in a remote country that is riddled with disease and poverty.

Her younger sister Phoebe is her exact opposite. She is her father's favorite, and happy just to have a hot boyfriend and frivolous career. Having her serious sister home grates on her nerves, and threatens to take some of her father's attention away from her.

Increasing the stress level is their mother, Emma, who has a lump that she is waiting for test results on, but she is determined not to let it affect her family's Christmas, so she is keeping it secret. Their father's secret son has decided to make contact with his new family, even though Andrew has made the cowardly decision not to answer his emails.

Add in Olivia's boyfriend who is fighting for his life in his own quarantine, and Phoebe's boyfriend who seems to be hiding a big secret, and emotions will continue to bubble up until they can't be contained anymore.

Honestly, this book had a great storyline, good writing, but I really didn't care about any of the characters. They all seemed selfish in their own way, or in Emma's case, such a pushover that I had no sympathy. It wasn't until the end that I began to care about any of them.

Current Goodreads Rating 3,87

Ghosts, then witches, so now what's my beef? Boring suburban family celebrating Christmas, that's what! Made me pull the Complaint Board right out of the shed. I will begrudgingly admit that this isn't your typical Christmas. The family is under quarantine because daughter Olivia has been working in Africa as a doctor, treating people with a deadly virus. Her return shakes up the holiday and makes it interesting. In fact, she was the only character whom I wanted to be in the room with. I would have preferred being in Africa with her, living through drama there.

Decorating a tree and baking special Christmas-y treats makes me unchy in a bad way. I know the point was to create a festive traditional holiday that is ruined by all sorts of drama. The sweet holiday that’s supposed to be all comfort and joy being eclipsed by discomfort and woe. Even so, it makes me want to beat feet out of there, to hide out in the backyard with wine and cigarettes while I spew rapid-fire cuss words. My reaction is especially strange because cussing is the only one of those three things that I do. My holiday-in-the-suburbs aversion probably relates back to the days when I needed to rebel but was too goody-two-shoes to do so, but who cares. This isn't Dr. Phil.

The family consists of Olivia the Mother-Theresa daughter, dad the food critic, Phoebe the vapid valley girl (hm…if there is a British version) younger daughter, and a mom so clueless and Betty Crocker-y it sent me to my pretend backyard vices way too often. There are two minor characters—a long-lost son and Olivia’s Father-Theresa boyfriend—who are interesting, but they don’t have enough airtime. Then there’s Phoebe’s asinine boyfriend who I always wanted to ditch.

Okay, I’ll switch to the Joy Jar for a bit, just so you can see why it earned a 3.5.

- What’s majorly good: I wanted to see what would happen. There was no chance I'd stop reading.

- I believe in you! The boring characters, plus Olivia The Interesting, were all well-drawn and believable.

-I love me a secret! There are several—all believable and mostly intriguing. I always love it when people are trying to hide something; it ratchets up the tension. Everything gets all messed up as people do some combination of lying, covering their tracks, cringing, and getting all verklempt. And then there’s always luscious excitement and chaos when, ta da, the secret is exposed.

- Good bones. The book had good bones yet didn't strut its stuff. By this I mean it was a seamless read--the plot and the pace at which it unfolded was well done, yet we didn't see any self-conscious effort behind it. It was smooth going.

Now, back to the Complaint Board:

-Save me! From the boring people in a boring family at a boring holiday. Bah humbug! (I know I’m getting boring by repeating this complaint, but it was the number 1 downer for me. Okay, I promise never to mention it again.)

-Golly. Oh dear. That’s a direct quote uttered by Emma the Mom. Mom was just too old-fashioned, clueless, and repressed. Maybe there are tons of 65-year-old women like her (I’m in my 60s and I don’t know any), but even if there are, I don’t want to be stuck with them for seven days. I think the author could have made her less of an old-fashioned dummy.

-The quarantine!! The quarantine! Now wait just one minute. You mean to say that the national health department wouldn’t have been monitoring the quarantine, making sure no one came to or left the house? It was all too loosey-goosey. “Oh, George showed up; come on in!” “Darn it, Phoebe and George left the house for a while.” “Oh dear, Andrew went for a run.” “Gee, I hope none of them spread the deadly virus.” I just find it hard to believe that the government would have trusted people to obey the rules of quarantine without monitoring. I especially found it hard to buy at the end, when one of the gang showed symptoms. The rest of the characters got to leave the quarantine. What? The health department didn’t insist that they be secluded longer when one of them showed symptoms? That just didn’t seem plausible.

-Spare me the coincidences. [Spoiler: Nah, Emma the Mom would NOT have met Jesse the long-lost son at a baggage carousel. The author had the characters marvel at the weird coincidence too, but I still just didn’t buy it. Plus, how many people have you ever talked to while getting your baggage at the airport? I’m not an extravert, but I can’t remember saying anything but “Were you on my flight? Is our baggage coming to 123?” Coincidence No. 2: The long-lost son Jesse ends up spending the night with his half-sister’s fiancé. Nope, just didn’t believe it.]

-Nah, I don’t believe Dad would have done THAT! And because he did THAT, it was obvious that later it would wreak havoc. [Spoiler: Dad holds on to a letter that in real life, he would have shredded or burnt in 2 seconds flat. It was painfully obvious to me, and I’m sure to lots of other readers, that keeping the letter would bring big trouble down the road. It turns out that way later, the letter goes to a good home, but I was left saying, “But he would never have kept in the first place!”]

-I knew it. Oh, you’re so predictable. Toward the end, there was one thing going on with Olivia that was totally obvious. We were supposed to think something else was happening, but I knew it wasn’t. (Sorry for being vague, but I don’t want a spoiler.) I’d be surprised if others didn’t suspect what I suspected. This pretty much wrecked the suspense.

-I say the “She said” and the “he said” were confusing. Each chapter was written from a different character’s point of view, with third-person narration. I’m not sure this type of narration always works when you alternate chapters, especially so often. I guess I’m used to the easier-to-follow first-person style. Here, every time I got to a new chapter I was jolted. Whose point-of-view do we have here now? The author was careful to mention the character’s name right away, but as I said, it was jolting. Plus within the chapters, I sometimes had a little trouble remembering whose point-of-view it was.

So see, the Complaint Board is bigger than the Joy Jar, so this book stays in the Meh camp. Basically I was trapped in a house for seven long days with mostly boring people, but I was still anxious to see how it all panned out. I liked it okay, but a lot of things made me whine whine whine.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

A story of what happens when a family is forced, due to a quarantine order, to spend seven days together over the Christmas holiday. As one might expect, all sorts of drama and crises erupt.

Francesca Hornak’s debut novel, Seven Days of Us, is an interesting blend of family drama, humor and character study. I loved and hated it. I have to admit, that I struggled with the first few chapters, but I eventually got into the even rhythm of the story. The layout is interesting, and the characters were deliciously unlikable—some were the sort you love to hate, while others had to reveal themselves wholly in order to care for them.

Seven days of quarantine, and each character shares the narration for any particular day. Every day the family members’ existence, memories, and revelations are revealed. The Birch family is not particularly likeable. As individuals, they have secrets and they harbor resentments. They’re self absorbed. As family, they’re not much better. This is a seriously dysfunctional family. They don’t communicate, share, or offer support. Not one of them looks to the family as a bastion from their problems. They have grown apart, and each cocoons him-or her-self in their own little world. The lack of identity as a family unit is tragic, and seven days of forced togetherness without outside diversion seems tortuous.

Avoid spoiler reviews that summarize the plot. While there are no big twists, as the story chunks along, day by day of the forced quarantine, and the tension mounts as the characters get moody and cranky as their old baggage/arguments resurface. The family dynamics become barely contained chaos with the addition of a couple unplanned, additions to the ancestral country home.

The upheaval created by these guests changed my view of the characters dramatically. Those unexpected, unwanted guests force the members of the Birch family to become more introspective about their choices and actions, and subsequently, Andrew, Emma, Olivia, and Phoebe are laid open to one another.

Seven Days of Us is about family. It is about secrets and lies destroying relationships. It’s about omissions and unspoken resentments being as deadly as a bold-faced lie. It’s about reasons to again believe that your family will do anything and everything for you. You can return home again.

Sometimes the stars align and I get lucky. I won a copy of this novel from the publisher AND I was approved for it on Netgalley, so I took this as a sign that I had to read it. I love holiday books, and I really wanted to push this one off until closer to Christmas, but since I did receive TWO advance copies, I felt I should read it before the publishing date. But I highly recommend picking this one up to read either over the Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday, cuddled under a blanket, next to a smoldering fire, with a cup of tea in hand. Think of this as a much mellower--and British--version of a Jonathan Tropper novel. I enjoyed the flawed characters and how they grew through the book but still stayed true to their characters. I found myself identifying with different aspects--positive and negative--of each one. Seven Days of Us continued to surprise until the end!

Imagine being stuck in your home with your immediate for seven days under quarantine and adding in its the week of Christmas with heightened feelings involved! Although I wondered from the beginning how real this could be and if the government would allow you to quarantine yourself and would have you quarantined with your family, it still made for a fun story.

Olivia and Phoebe are sisters, but that is as far as the similarities go. They were raised in the same home, but thats about it. Phoebe is still living and home and waiting for her prince charming to sweep her off her feet. Olivia is the cause of the quarantine and has spent her life from adventure to adventure. With Emma and Andrew their parents each holding secrets, the seven day quarantine will be full of fun drama!

I loved the story. Although I may have rolled my eyes a few times at the plausibility of it all, I still loved seeing a small immediate family hash out the past and the present and try to reconnect and love on each other.

If you are a fan like I am of the family drama then this one is right up your alley. I will warn that it is set in England and definitely has a British feel to it, so if that isn't your thing, I would warn you against this book. BUT if you don't mind a little Britishness in your reading, then this one is just great!

Olivia returns home from treating an epidemic in Africa and it forces not only her, but her entire family to be quarantined for the entire week over the Christmas holidays. A GR friend of mine compared this to This is Where I Leave You. But this is bittersweet, sad really, not humorous. Almost everyone is hiding some sort of secret, all of which will rock the family. The thing here is that these folks just don't talk to each other. Is it, as Jesse thinks, that whole British stiff upper lip thing? The story is told from all the multiple points of view, so you are privy to all their thoughts, the same ones they aren't confiding to each other. This book reminds us why family is so often best taken in small doses. You see the sibling rivalry, the parental favorites.

One of the main themes here is feeling out of place. Whether it's Olivia feeling overwhelmed to be back in England and dealing with first world problems or Jesse flying from L.A. to the Norfolk seaside of England to meet his birth father. As Olivia writes “Because it turns out that coming back home can be lonely”.

I alternated between feeling sympathy for Phoebe and irritated by her. The typical young thing, no concerns beyond her wedding dreams. Flip side, I wanted to strangle Andrew, who thinks playing ostrich will solve his problems. Hornak does a wonderful job of fleshing out each one of these characters and getting the whole family dynamic thing.

This a lovely, sad character study. There are a few too many melodramatic turns, some of which you can see coming from miles away. But that doesn't stop this from being, in the end, a heartwarming tale of family love.

My thanks to netgalley and Berkeley Publishing for an advance copy of this novel.

I really loved this family drama (even though it did make my hypochondria flare up a bit ;-). Emma and Andrew's oldest, Olivia, has returned to England for Christmas after treating patients with an ebola-like disease in Liberia. The entire family must spend seven days together in quarantine in the family's country estate. Each family member has one gigantic secret, which keeps the level of tension and suspense high for everyone, including the reader. The chapters are short, and the entire novel is told in alternating viewpoints to keep you turning the pages. This is a wonderful comedy of errors, as well as a beautiful meditation on love and family. Highly recommended if you enjoy British humor and family dramas.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the preview copy!

Seven Days of Us is an entertaining and deceptively light novel about a family. The Birches are an interesting group. Andrew, the father, is a snarky restaurant reviewer for a newspaper. Emma, the matriarch, just wants everyone to have the kind of Christmas holiday she remembers from childhood. Altruistic eldest daughter Olivia is a doctor just returned from relief work in Liberia and the reason for the family quarantine. Younger daughter Phoebe is completely self-absorbed and more than a bit annoyed at being forced to spend the holidays with her family instead of her new fiancé. Told from the perspective of each family member, plus a couple of other characters, the chapters are short and follow a day-by-day form that made the novel easy to stop and start reading. This was also a great way to lay out the Birch family’s messy dynamics. It ended up being an emotional read for me – that was unexpected and very much appreciated. Recommended to fans of novels about imperfect families. I loved the setting(s) and the holiday-ness to which I think most readers will relate on one level or another.

Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak will keep you up late as you race to the finish. This novel features a British family who is in a voluntary one week quarantine after one of their members returns from treating plague victims in Africa. The quarantine rules aren't followed quite as strictly as they should be and this just adds to the plot. I love all of the family members as they each have their own quirks. I'm a bit conflicted about the ending and I keep coming back to whether I'd have written it the same way if I'd been the author. This book was a pleasure to read. Read and enjoy!

It's hard to give an objective review of this book, because it felt very personal for me. I very strongly identified with Olivia's character. Reading about her return to England after working as a doctor during a pandemic in Africa reminded me of returning to the US after living in southern Africa. Like Olivia, I had trouble communicating with people who seemed so shallow, self-centered, and stupid, who didn't seem to care about the reality of so many people facing pandemics, poverty, low literacy, unemployment... But, in the book and in life, I learned to see the complexities in people, the importance of sharing and explaining instead of being hostile and withdrawn, and to appreciate that we are all products of our life experiences, internal biases, and cultural surroundings. Love can bridge the gaps, can open people's eyes, and can inspire people to go out and be good in the world.