I tend to be picky when it comes to books. I tend to love books that I can get through in a day and stay drawn in the entire time. Books that aren’t quite as gripping for me, tend to never get finished. It’s really rare for me to have a book that I enjoy, but am not completely consumed with, but Ten Days by Janet Gilsdorf fell into that category for me.

The book is about a small family from Michigan. The wife Anna is a teacher, the husband Jake is a doctor and together they have two children – 3.5 year old Chris and 6 month old Eddie. They go to a wedding in the UP, and Anna catches a cold. When they get home, Jake goes to work overnight at the hospital and Eddie appears to be sick. Anna calls Jake to tell him about Eddie’s symptoms, and Jake says he probably just caught her cold and it’s nothing to get worried about. The next morning, they realize that Eddie is very very ill. The rest of the book follows their journey as Eddie remains in the hospital and the affect that his illness has on the family.

I’m from Michigan, so it was neat to have bits and pieces thrown in about our local sports teams. I enjoyed the part of the story that followed Eddie and his illness, but I really struggled to connect with the characters. The baby sitter, grandparents, and the two children seemed believable but Anna and Jake both felt a bit “off” to me.

While it’s completely understandable how and why a couple might disconnect while dealing with a very ill child and the stresses surrounding it, their reasoning and views of each other felt incredibly childish for people who are suppose to be a teacher and a doctor. Anna isn’t very knowledgeable about the medical terms that are used in the hospital, and because her husband is a doctor she asks him a lot of questions. This is a huge annoyance to Jake, and at one point it seems like his annoyance with having to explain medical terminology to her is his primary reason for looking up an ex girlfriend. While I realize its possible that doctors get tired of explaining medical terminology to people, that would be an incredibly stupid reason to consider cheating on your wife – when you *knew* when you married her that she wasn’t in the medical profession. I just can’t see anyone ever doing that for that reason. I think the book would have been much better off if they had somehow escalated the tension between the couple based on the stress they were having.

At another point, Jake is in the waiting room and browses through a magazine from back to front. Anna thinks to herself that if he truly loved her, he wouldn’t do that because at some point in the past, she had asked him not to do that because it makes him look like he doesn’t know how to read. This is just another example of how these characters felt fake to me. Why would a woman question her husbands love for her based on something so silly? She also seemed to favor the baby over her 3 year old, because her 3 year old was your typical oh-so-busy, into everything 3 year old. I think this was just an attempt to increase the readers attachment to the baby prior to him getting ill, but to me it felt more like picking favorites than building up Eddie.

Based on little things like this, the characters just felt off and were difficult for me to connect with. Yet, the overall story of a baby who goes from seemingly completely healthy to being close to death overnight is a very interesting story-line and I enjoyed the book based on that basic piece of the story. I wish that the character development would have matched up better to the story-line that was so interesting. Overall, I enjoyed the book enough to finish it and plan to give it to my sister next as I think she will enjoy it as well.Ten Days is available for purchase at Kensington Publishing Co, Amazon and others.

Emily

Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 28 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister Wives and Veep. I like listening to Jason Isbell, John Prine, and other alt-country or Americana music. I created Emily Reviews as a creative outlet to share my life and the products that I love with others.

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