Book Review: Seven days of us - F. Hornak

A very Christmassy book. Firstly I so love this cover, I love the colours, the title, the little house.
A posh family, mother, father and two daughters in their thirties, are to spend a whole week in their family house in Norfolk with no external contacts as the eldest daughter Olivia is in quarantine after volunteering to cure Haag in Africa as a doctor.
But this is not a normal family, it's a family where almost everybody as a big secret which it is going to come out, in a way or another, during this forced cohabitation.
I loved "spying" into the holidays of a upper/middle-class London family, even if a very unusual holiday, and see their Christmas and New Year traditions, and the dynamics of the family life.
I really liked Olivia, albeit her coldness and snobbishness to begin with.
I found the father, who I liked at the beginning, becoming weaker and weaker as a person through the novel and I quite dislike him towards the end.
Despite being an unreal setting, and a lot of secrets for such a small family, I really enjoyed this book, witty, Christmassy, engrossing.
A very nice read for the holiday season!


Overall rating: 7      Plot: 7     Writing style: 7      Cover:  9

Title: Seven days of us

Author: Francesca Hornak
Publisher: Piatkus
Pages: 384
Publication year: 2017

Plot:

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...

The Author:

Francesca Hornak is a journalist and writer, whose work has appeared in newspapers and magazines including The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Red, Grazia and Stylist. Her column History Of The World In 100 Modern Objects first appeared in The Sunday Times Style Magazine in 2013 and ran for two years, later becoming a title with Portico. Francesca is also the author of a second non-fiction book, Worry with Mother.