Wicked Review: Just One Day

Published: August 20, 2013

Publisher: Speak

Series: Just One Day #1

Acquired: Digital copy

Amazon || Barnes and Noble || The Book Depository || National Bookstore (for PH readers)

Allyson Healey's life is exactly like her suitcase—packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything she’s not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform Allyson’s life.

A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the “accidents” of fate, Just One Day shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost. . . and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know.

The first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willem’s story—Just One Year—is coming soon!

I want to thank my booknerd Momma, Joan, for lending me a digital copy of this when I needed one. <3

So, here's the thing...I don't even know where to start. I just finished this last night and I feel like this turn out to be more of a rambling than a very sensible review. Bear with me.

I think that at some point in our life, we felt like we were Allyson. Her life was planned out for her by her ridiculously overbearing parents. We went along with what they wanted so as to not disappoint them. Thankfully, I never had such overbearing parents. Not that they were lax or anything, they let me decide what to take in college. Of course, with the promise of graduating and moving on to greener pastures.

I waited for Allyson to snap. Ever since she came back from Paris, she was this zombie. She hardly knew how to function anymore. She kept ditching her classes, even her friends. Her mind goes back to Paris, to that place of accident and love and life and Willem.

Oh Willem, why must you leave Allyson hanging like that. The worst thing, I think, to happen after having sex is waking up not knowing where the other person is. This leaves you with this...sinking feeling. I almost want to throw my iPad because I didn't want to see Allyson to be in pain. She was so hung up on Willem that I just wanted to scream at her to move on and just live life.

But anyone who has been in love, like really in love, would know that moving on is never really an easy thing. I would know.

Her path to discovering her true self is a slow progress. She dropped her pre-med courses much to her mother's dismay and took up other classes which is very off the path of medicine, like Ceramics and Shakespeare Out Loud.

Shakespeare...He's like the ultimate matchmaker. I mean, in all of the contemporaries I have read, Shakespeare seems to be with magnet that brings two characters together...or sometimes apart.

Alas, she is in Paris, armed with the language and just memories of her and Willem together. The Paris in this book is unlike the one in Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. This Paris is so very real. It's stained almost. Stained with Allyson and Willem.

This book did stain me alright. I am still reeling from that ending. Oh dear God that ending. I just. *SCREAMS*

Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in such publications as Jane, Seventeen, Glamour, Elle, and The New York Times Magazine, to name just a few. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter. She is the author of Where She Went, the sequel of If I Stay, Just One Day, Just One Year and the soon to be published Just One Night. 

Send your love to Gayle Forman here: Twitter || Goodreads || Website || Facebook