[Book Review]: Just One Day by Gayle Forman

Book Title: Just One Day

Author: Gayle Forman

Publisher: Speak - Penguin Group

Source: Purchased

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Year: 2013

Page Count: 369

ISBN: 9780142422953

Find it at: Gayle Forman's Official Website

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My Rating: 3.0 out of 5.0

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Goodreads' Blurb:
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! Released is also the novella, Just One Night.

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Written in the first person point-of-view of Allyson's, the book consists of two parts: One Day and One Year. The first part recounts about how Allyson meets Willem and their adventure in Paris just in one day. The second part is about how Allyson deals with her broken heart after Willem disappears before her without a word. And how her world seems to turn upside down because of it, until finally she decides to look for him to Paris.

Gayle Forman has been one of my favorite authors since I read her works; If I Stay and Where She Went. After those two books, I felt the need to read other books she wrote and I decided to go on with Just One Day. My expectation was so high that I could not hold the anticipation to read this one.

I really liked the author's frequent insertions on analogy about life. I found them really inspiring. I liked how she offered the readers the description of Europe and the adventure of a bare traveler.

But there are some significant things that made myself disappointed in this book. Since the first chapters of it, I already felt annoyed with Allyson's early characterization, added by the writing style of the author's. And as I was reading it, I couldn't believe that this one was written Gayle Forman, the one who captivated me with her 'Where She Went'. All I could see was only an amateur writer who recklessly tried to do the first writing in first person point of view.

I don't know if the author deliberately designed Allyson's annoying character in the first chapters of the book, so that she could give a room for her to grow gradually in the whole book (which I think is a remedy so that I wouldn't give less than three stars for this book). But I was frustrated much by this book. I felt exhausted reading it. It was just like my early huge expectation was plummeted down to the ground with some small mistakes of the author's.

Nevertheless, I will still read the next installments for this series, only for the sake of me being curious about what happens next with Allyson and Willem's eventual encounter. I will say that this book is recommended for backpackers who have those wanderlust over Europe.

Also by Gayle Forman: If I Stay (click here to read my review for the book) and Where She Went (click here to read my review for the book).

[Book Review]: Where She Went by Gayle Forman

Image Source: Goodreads

Book Title: Where She Went
Author: Gayle Forman
Publisher: Speak - Penguin Group
Format: Compact Disc, Hardcover, Paperback, Paperback, eBook, Digital Audiobook
Source: Purchased
Genre: Young Adult, Romance
Year: 2011
Page Count: 260
ISBN: 9780142420898
Find it at: Official Website of Gayle Forman
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My Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0

Goodreads' Blurb:
It's been three years since Mia walked out of Adam's life.

And three years he's spent wondering why.

When their paths cross again in New York City, Adam and Mia are brought back together for one life-changing night.


Adam finally has the opportunity to ask Mia the questions that have been haunting him. But will a few hours in this magical city be enough to lay their past to rest, for good - or can you really have a second chance at first love?

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Opposite from the first book, Where She Went is narrated by Adam Wilde. The book takes moments in one day. In one day, like any other day, Adam wakes up, goes through her daily routines as the frontman of a bona fide rock group and deals with the emotional breakdown when Mia left her after her accident three years ago and thus he never sees and hears about her again.

In one day, the book recounts about Adam and Mia at the beginning of their relationship, a little about how he was coping when Mia was still in comatose condition, how the accident affected their relationship until Mia decided to one-sidedly end their relationship.

In one day, after a small fuss with a reporter, with his band manager's approval, he goes out for a walk to clear his head, surrounding the New York city. And there he sees an advertisement with a picture of her, telling him that there is to be her concert that night. In that one day, he will see her. Will Adam gets the answers to his questions all this time? Will Adam get a clear disclosure of their relationship? Will Adam be finally healed with his eventual encounter with Mia? Those all are to be answered in one day.

Where She Went is the sequel to If I Stay. To read my review for If I Stay, please click here.

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As I recall, there are not too many young adult books out there with male as its main character, or at least I haven't read them in a significant number.

I know that men have emotion too. They deal with happiness and sadness in quite different ways with women. Before I read this book, I could not believe or at least, haven't witnessed emotional breakdown on men. I don't believe that they will feel and hurt that deep.

But Gayle Forman fights against all my perceptions. She spells every little detail about Adam's emotional struggle amazingly that I sometime found myself agape when I read it. The first point of view the author adepts on If I Stay was awesome, it made me know how Mia feels and think. But in Where She Went, I could understand and felt in behalf of Adam. The narration in the whole book, made me like I was in Adam's head for real, and I was the one who experienced it all as Adam. The angst, depression, and tension Adam felt, I could feel it too.

Near the end of the book, I was already too depressed that I could only hope that Adam ended it all up with Mia, even I hoped that he would yell, shout and went mad at her, made her know how she had broken him down to the point he did not know who himself was anymore.

Apart from that all, I'm glad now that I've been over all that agony as the book was finished. And I willingly give this book the highest available rating in my standard for all the feeling experience the author rendered to me.

[Book Review]: If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Image Source: Goodreads

Book Title: If I Stay

Author: Gayle Forman

Publisher: Dutton Penguin

Source: Loan

Genre: Young Adult

Year: 2009

Page Count: 321

ISBN: 9780525421030

Find it at: Official Website of Gayle Forman

Add to your Goodreads shelf.

My rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

Goodreads' Blurb:

Just listen, Adam says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel.

I open my eyes wide now.

I sit up as much as I can.

And I listen.

Stay, he says.

Choices. Seventeen-year-old Mia is faced with some tough ones: Stay true to her first love—music—even if it means losing her boyfriend and leaving her family and friends behind?

Then one February morning Mia goes for a drive with her family, and in an instant, everything changes. Suddenly, all the choices are gone, except one. And it's the only one that matters.

If I Stay is a heartachingly beautiful book about the power of love, the true meaning of family, and the choices we all make.

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Mia Hall is an ordinary teenager who lives a happy life with her parents and younger brother. She has a best friend, Kim Schein, who used to be her enemy. She is in a relationship with Adam Wilde, a cool guitarist of an arising band. And she is about to reach the next stage of her endeavor to have a career as a cellist.

Everything seems perfect until one morning, when the snow comes and it's seemingly good for the Hall family to take a day off and enjoy the boon. But then a truck comes out of nowhere and the accident is unavoidable. Mia then runs into a peculiar experience that while her physical body is in comatose, her spirit can actually float out and witness how her family, her boyfriend and her friends cope with her condition. Eventually Mia finds out that she can decide what is going to happen with herself. Will she stay or let go?

This novel is written in a first person narrative, which is Mia's and adapts a episodic plot, where flashbacks of Mia's daily life before the accident is alternately interpolated with the present condition.

The sequel of the book is Where She Went which was released in 2011.

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The first time I turned the page and found out that the book is written in a first person narrative, I was a bit discouraged. Since the last first-person narrated book I read, ended up in a complete disaster. But Gayle Forman proves that she can handle it beautifully. She is able to show other characters' thoughts and traits from their speeches and gestures even though the main narrator is Mia, so the readers feel that they are real and human. That's what I think is the main issue with first-person narrated book. If the author cannot take advantage of it, there will be a huge failure in the whole book.

Since the theme of the story includes a comatose condition of the character, I thought it would also be a cheesy and mushy one, which I always encountered in another stories with the same plot. Instead the book gives me a dynamic journey with sadness and laughter as it recounts Mia's story.

I heard that the adapted movie will be released in no time. I can't wait to see how the director will choose to shoot the flashbacks part of Mia's story. That would be really cool, I think.

Meanwhile the second sequel book is en route. Hope it will arrive soon ;) Overall, this is one of the books I will recommend you if you like drama genre.