‘Just One Day’ (Just One Day #1) by Gayle Forman

Allyson has never done anything unexpected until she meets Willem. He asks her to go to Paris with him for just one day, and so she does. The book is a good mixture of travelling, love and finding yourself, which pretty much describes most teenagers wishes. Together I think Willem and Allyson make our times most epic love story.

by Natacha

Allyson is finally done with high school and is off to Europe with her best friend Melanie and ’Teen Tours’. She hasn’t had a great trip so far – especially because the trip to Paris got cancelled, the one city Allyson wanted to visit the most.

As the tour comes to an end Allyson meets a guy who she meets the day after again, but this time it’s on her train to London. She learns that his name is Willem, but she doesn’t give him her name. Willem soon learns that what Allyson wanted the most was to go to Paris, and as they leave the train he asks her, if she would like to go to Paris with him for just one day.
Surprised by herself Allyson says yes and they soon find themselves in Paris the most romantic city in the world, but is it possible to fall in love in just one day?

Nothing I’ve ever read before   

‘Just One Day’ was one of those special books that your sometimes lucky enough to find. What really intrigued me was the whole theme of travelling. If I could I would travel all over the world and I would especially travel across America, since it’s my all time favorite country! The book also focusing on important themes like growing up, changing, learning, falling in love and being independent. It’s all phases that we need to go through sometime in our life, and as I read the book I was going through Allyson’s phases with her.

When you look at the book overall it is pretty unrealistic, because honestly who goes to Paris with a guy they just met? But I have to say, that for me, it didn’t really matter. It’s the reason why I love books so much. Your enter your own world, where anything can happen and not everything is realistic. That’s again why the book was so special to me, because Allyson was doing things that I could only dream of doing, she saw her opportunity to go and she took it!

Excerpt from ‘Just One Day’

”Maybe you could leave your phone off, so it goes to voicemail?” I suggest. I look at Willem, who still has the fistful of cash spilling out of his hand. “Are you sure about this? I thought you were going back to Holland.”
“I thought so too. The winds are maybe blowing me in a different direction.”
I turn to Melanie. It’s on her now. She narrows her green eyes at Willem. “If you rape or murder my friend, I will kill you.”
Willem tsk-tsks. “You Americans are so violent. I’m Dutch. The worst I will do is run her over with a bicycle.”
“While stoned!” Melanie adds.
“Okay, maybe there’s that,” Willem admits. Then he looks at me, and I feel a ripple of something flutter through me. Am I really going to do this?
“So, Lulu? What do you say? You want to go to Paris? For just one day?”
It’s totally crazy. I don’t even know him. And I could get caught. And how much of Paris can you see in just one day? And this could all go disastrously wrong in so many ways. All of that is true. I know it is. But it doesn’t change the fact that I want to go.
So this time, instead of saying no, I try something different.
I say yes.