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A review by liralen
Seven Days of You by Cecilia Vinesse
3.0
It's Sophia's last week in Tokyo, it's her mortal enemy's first week back after years away, and she's managed to fall in love with him.
I was eager to read this because I'm terribly curious about books that take place elsewhere, ones that (in YA literature, anyway) ask the characters not just to deal with normal growing pains but also place them in a different cultural context than the characters and/or readers are used to. This didn't work for me as well as I would have liked, for a couple of reasons: romance and use of Tokyo.
Romance-wise, there was just...too much of it for me. It's hard for me to care about a romance that was clearly either a) not going to last longer than the week the book spanned or b) spin out into some improbable 'we haven't spoken for years but now that we've had a week together we'll do the long-distance thing indefinitely because we know we're meant to be' thing. Even Sophia knew this, but everything else seemed to be of secondary importance throughout the book. (I also find it really, really weird that the reason she hates him at the beginning is that he once sent her a mean text by accident...but she's perfectly happy to receive the same kind of message (i.e., a mean text about someone else) from the guy she has a crush on at the beginning of the book.)
And in terms of use of Tokyo... I don't know. There were some Tokyo-specific details and so on, but I had trouble getting past the fact that Sophia's lived in Tokyo, on and off, for more than half her life but doesn't speak more than the most rudimentary of Japanese. I do understand that it's a difficult language and that she's been attending an English-language school, but having trouble saying 'please' in Japanese when she orders pizza? I cannot imagine. Literally, I cannot imagine moving somewhere for more than a few months (more than a few weeks) and not putting any effort into learning the language. Her friends in the book are also of the expat variety, and for the most part Japanese culture in the book is limited to noodle shops, karaoke, and animated films.
It could have been worse (so much worse!), but I'd still love to find a YA book that really took me into Tokyo.
I was eager to read this because I'm terribly curious about books that take place elsewhere, ones that (in YA literature, anyway) ask the characters not just to deal with normal growing pains but also place them in a different cultural context than the characters and/or readers are used to. This didn't work for me as well as I would have liked, for a couple of reasons: romance and use of Tokyo.
Romance-wise, there was just...too much of it for me. It's hard for me to care about a romance that was clearly either a) not going to last longer than the week the book spanned or b) spin out into some improbable 'we haven't spoken for years but now that we've had a week together we'll do the long-distance thing indefinitely because we know we're meant to be' thing. Even Sophia knew this, but everything else seemed to be of secondary importance throughout the book. (I also find it really, really weird that the reason she hates him at the beginning is that he once sent her a mean text by accident...but she's perfectly happy to receive the same kind of message (i.e., a mean text about someone else) from the guy she has a crush on at the beginning of the book.)
And in terms of use of Tokyo... I don't know. There were some Tokyo-specific details and so on, but I had trouble getting past the fact that Sophia's lived in Tokyo, on and off, for more than half her life but doesn't speak more than the most rudimentary of Japanese. I do understand that it's a difficult language and that she's been attending an English-language school, but having trouble saying 'please' in Japanese when she orders pizza? I cannot imagine. Literally, I cannot imagine moving somewhere for more than a few months (more than a few weeks) and not putting any effort into learning the language. Her friends in the book are also of the expat variety, and for the most part Japanese culture in the book is limited to noodle shops, karaoke, and animated films.
It could have been worse (so much worse!), but I'd still love to find a YA book that really took me into Tokyo.