So many love stories are written about falling in love and everything magically works, but Just One Day is different. Gayle Foreman, the author, did an amazing job with character development and relationships between the characters.
Allyson Healey, the main character, did everything “right” at the beginning, or at least what her parents thought she should do. She had no real adventure and didn’t really want any, but that changed. She was so uptight on her tour to Europe that her parents gave her as a present for graduating high school, but only three days before she has to return home, she meets someone, Willem, an actor, a traveler, and a person who believes in accidents. When he learns that Allyson didn’t get to go to Paris during her tour, he invites her to go for a day. They spend an amazing day together and in the morning all the freedom and happiness Allyson felt disappears because Willem isn’t there. A year later she does something very unexpected, another accident while traveling.
Gayle Forman wrote her characters as if they were real and alive. She traveled for a year around the world with her husband. Gayle used to write for Seventeen magazine about “all the ways that young people get treated like crap—and overcome!” she explains in the biography on her website.
Just One Day is an amazing book with outstanding characters and a story any reader can follow and connect to. Gayle Forman did an exceptional job writing this book, and it is a good book to read while on summer vacation.