Reviewed by Ro
TITLE: Seven Minutes
AUTHOR: Raquel Riley
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 408 Pages
RELEASE DATE: May 15, 2026
BLURB:
Seven minutes isn’t enough for a life. But it’s long enough to remember how much I’m loved.
Eli-
I thought the worst part of losing my husband would be the slow drift apart, the way hospital shifts swallowed our nights, and silence replaced laughter. I never imagined the worst part would be dying in his ER, the flatline screaming while his hands were the last to touch me.
But death isn’t empty. Not at first. In those final seven minutes, my life plays back like a reel, and every frame belongs to him. Our first kiss. Our first night tangled together. The vows we spoke when we promised forever. Even the mornings when we forgot to kiss goodbye.
It’s all him. Always him.
I don’t know if this is the end or a cruel mercy, but I do know one thing—somewhere inside these seven minutes is a choice, a chance, or a goodbye. And if love alone could bring me back, I’d open my eyes to him every time.
REVIEW:
This is a very tough one to review, because it was and wasn’t what I expected. Which I know makes absolutely no sense but I’ll try to explain it. The book starts out with Adrian at the ER hospital where he works, running as they bring in a trauma patient. When he finally looks at the face, he realizes it is his husband, Eli, who is crashing on the cart and dying. I can’t even imagine what that does to a person. Adrian is beside himself, refusing to allow the crash team to quit trying to resuscitate Eli.
“I should’ve come home earlier, should’ve made more time, should’ve told you every damn day how much I love you. I thought we had years left-I thought we had time.”
This is such a common thing – we all think we have time to do the things, say the things, be the things. But sometimes we just don’t.
Adrian and Eli are an established couple. They had a meet-cute ten years ago, when Eli accidentally spilled coffee all over Adrian, and it was seriously love at first sight. Eli was studying to be a paralegal, and Adrian was studying to be a doctor. The love they shared is the kind of love people search for a lifetime. Until it wasn’t. The love is there, but the care on Adrian’s part is not. The Last Day gives an idea of how much Adrian has checked out of the relationship. “After twelve years together, I was an afterthought.” I felt so bad for Eli. As the Last Day spins out, we see the accident. This is when it moves to the Seven Minutes.
As Eli’s brain moves through the minutes, the descriptions are very disjointed, as you would expect from the subject. He is remembering their first date, first kiss, getting to know each other, and loving each other. “This is it. This is what people mean when they talk about home.”The first minute is so lovely, the joy of Eli’s childhood, his beloved pet, Max, running to him, highlights of growing up. And the most important, meeting Adrian. Second minute, they are so in love. The third minute, their first time having sex. The fourth minute is “It was the kind of ordinary that felt like it might last forever. Until it didn’t.” It is here that things start to fall apart. “You come home and shut me out. You’re here, but you’re not with me.” Adrian wants to make sure Eli isn’t giving up on them, and he proposes. I thought this was for sure not the right move. In the sixth minute, we see Adrian have a health scare that he basically ignores. “Love doesn’t end with a single act of cruelty or neglect, but with a thousand quiet surrenders.” Broke my heart for Eli. In the seventh minute, we really see how Adrian isn’t listening to Eli. I admit, I kept looking for ways Eli was also responsible for what was happening, but intentionally or not, this was squarely on Adrian’s shoulders.
And here is where I am conflicted. I loved the Seven Minutes. That whole idea is why I chose the book. Your brain stays alive for those minutes before you die, going over important events in your life. I have read that the reason for the “life flashing before your eyes” is that your brain is searching through memories trying to find a solution to what is killing you. But that part, despite it sounding like a lot, is a very short part of the book. It moves quickly into the present, where Eli is comatose and Adrian is holding vigil as a scared husband, not the confident doctor. There is a lot of regret on Adrian’s part as he waits. ”To quiet the guilt that came from always being gone, always putting something else first, convincing myself that providing was the same as loving.” He thinks about when they were house hunting and how he blew Eli’s opinions aside, so sure he knew best.
There are many medical details. As a huge fan of The Pitt and Code Black, this definitely worked for me, but I realize it won’t work for everyone. So be aware going in that all that is there. So while the seven minutes are there, and are essential, I didn’t feel they were the focus of the book. The focus was can people claw their way back when the relationship was so broken? When Adrian thinks, “What if nothing had happened? Would I have kept going like that-always late, always late, always missing him by inches?” And I thought, yes. It is awful that it takes something catastrophic for people to realize what is happening and what they take for granted, and so often it really is too late. “So why had I wasted the time we had?” The book is very emotionally angsty (well, medically angsty too) with a lot of self-recrimination and self-reflection. There is a desperate feeling of wanting to go back and make different choices.
RATING: 
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