Take a photo of a barcode or cover
aemynadira 's review for:
Just One Day
by Gayle Forman
Just One Day appeared to be my sort of YA contemporary novel: romance + travel + heartache. Allyson Healey is on a school trip to England when she meets Willem De Ruiter, a charming Dutch boy, starring in an underground performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Allyson knows there's something between them, although she's not quite sure if it's genuine, and so she does something out of the ordinary and embarks on a spontaneous journey. Allyson and Willem jump on the Eurostar and head to Paris for the day, even though Allyson will have to be on a plane home in a few days. She doesn't speak French, she's never been to the city before, and she's hopeless at reading maps, so she leaves it up to Willem to show her the beauty of the city. Until he disappears and she's left stranded.
I picked up Just One Day and incorrectly assumed that Willem would leave Allyson, I know he leaves from the start, shortly towards the end of the story, after I've spent nearly the entire length of the book with the happy couple, but no. It happens much sooner than that, which makes for a much more interesting and emotionally complex novel.
Just One Day really just shows us the briefest of romances. We can see how both Allyson and Willem get caught up in the moment, in what they mean to each other and what the city means to them. Allyson is a little like me, she plays it safe and often holds back, so I do understand the urge to do something drastic, like get away for a while and live life as if it's a movie, but Just One Day doesn't let us go in that direction. In reality, it's not romantic and life isn't a movie and no, an inspiring movie score won't suddenly start to play.
After Willem leaves, I realize that the story's actually more about Allyson herself and the struggle she's had with control over her own life and her own happiness, which is brilliantly done and told with honesty and conviction. I love Anna and the French Kiss. I think it’s cute and wonderful and perfect, and at first I thought Just One Day was fairly similar, but it’s not that version of Paris that we see. I love that Just One Day goes in a different direction. Willem is cultured, elusive, spontaneous and an experienced traveler, the opposite of Allyson, but Just One Day isn't really about him.
If you're looking for a young adult romance, I'd say that although it's certainly part of the story and it's bittersweet, Just One Day is about the trials and tribulations of self-discovery more than anything else. I loved that it has a companion novel (Just One Year), rather than sequel, and would love to see this separate yet dual narrative appear more in young adult literature. It goes to show that one perspective can't truly give us the whole story.