Just One Day

Title: Just One Day

Author: Gayle Forman

Publisher: Dutton Juvenile

Publish Date:  8 January 2013

Pages: 368

ISBN:  9780525425915

Source:  bought

Genre:  ya, contemporary, romance

Series:  Just One Day

Other books in series:  Just One Year (Fall 2013)

Rating: LOVED

When sheltered American good girl Allyson "LuLu" Healey first meets laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter at an underground performance of Twelfth Night in England, there’s an undeniable spark. After just one day together, that spark bursts into a flame, or so it seems to Allyson, until the following morning, when she wakes up after a whirlwind day in Paris to discover that Willem has left. Over the next year, Allyson embarks on a journey to come to terms with the narrow confines of her life, and through Shakespeare, travel, and a quest for her almost-true-love, to break free of those confines.

How would you react if the events of one day change the person who you thought you were?  Allyson Healey had just graduated from high school and as a present, her parents sent her on a trip to Europe with the Teen Tours! group.  She gets to travel with her best friend, Melanie and she thinks that there is nothing better than that.  Her parents have planned this for her.  She has always been the kind of person who doesn’t take chances and is “averse to adventure.”  When they are in England lining up to watch Hamlet, they are surprised by a troupe of actors who give them a flyer about Shakespeare for free, and there they first meet Willem.

They go to the production of Twelfth Night and they are impressed by it.  Allyson wants to see more of Willem, but they lose track of him.  Disappointed, Allyson and Melanie go back to the hotel and get ready to visit their friend.  They get on a train to London to meet their friend and while Melanie goes to sleep, Allyson goes to the café car to get some breakfast.  Thinking that Melanie won’t be awake for a while, she sits and eats her breakfast.  A chance encounter has her running into Willem again.

They talk and it is there that Willem tells Allyson that she looks like Louise Brooks and nicknames her Lulu.  It is after the train ride that Willem convinces “Lulu” to go to Paris for a day since she wasn’t able to go on the tour.  This is unlike Allyson.  She jumps into it wholeheartedly.  That is where her adventure begins.  What will happen between Allyson and Willem?  How will Allyson’s Paris experience change her life?

I really liked this book. I originally started reading it because of a read-a-thon and thought that I wouldn’t like it.  I had never read anything by Forman (author of If I Stay), so I didn't know what I was in for.  I started with a sample and was hooked.   I had to know what happened between Willem and Allyson.  I admit that I cried more than once while reading this book.  (I’ve found that I’ve cried in a lot of contemporary books.  Maybe that is why I am starting to like them.)  I really like how you get to read Allyson’s thoughts.   The only thing missing would be to see what Willem was thinking during those experiences.  (I hear that Just One Year is going to be from his POV, so I’m excited for that.)  You get a little sense of the type of person that Willem is, but it is skewed by the emotions of an eighteen year old girl.   You see the many relationships that Allyson has and why she acts the way that she does.  It will be interesting to see how she finds out whom she really is and not what her parents have made her into.  I like the tagline for this series: “Just One Day and Just One Year show how in looking for someone else, you just might wind up finding yourself.”