Just One Day

Reseña Publicada en: El Extraño Gato del Cuento

(Actualizado: 18-10-2013)

Me tomó mucho tiempo pensar en las palabras adecuadas para empezarles a hablar de este maravilloso libro, aún no las encuentro.

Les puedo hablar de los suspiros que mi gato daba cada vez que lo dejaba caer o lo empujaba cuando terminaba de leer un párrafo y simplemente tenía que pararme a sacar toda la emoción que cada palabra me daba. O como esas mismas emociones me alentaban a leer a mi velocidad máxima y a la vez me pedían disminuir para disfrutarlas más tiempo.

Just One Day, es un libro para vivir, un libro para mancharse. Uno en el cual no debes detenerte a pensar en el tiempo, porque en este momento, mientras leemos, el tiempo no nos pertenece, no show more existe. Un libro que te llevará a una resaca literaria de las fuertes. Es de los que, al menos a mí, me hizo preguntarme que infiernos he hecho con mi vida, por qué la he dejado estancada, y como hasta ahora sigo esperando el después.

Los pesonajes, Allyson, Dee, Mel... Willem, las mismas situaciones, los paisajes que nunca he visto, absolutamente todo calza a la perfección. Y como mencioné: las emociones. Hay tantas, tan variadas, un gesto, una acción, todo me hizo sentirme parte del libro.

Allyson "Lulu" es grandiosa, no tiene superpoderes, no salvará al mundo, pero se salva a ella misma de algo que ni siquiera sabía. Personalmente me inspira mucho. En los momentos en que quizá en cualquier otro libro un personaje como el de ella podría parecer débil, Gayle (Oh, grandiosa Gayle, ¿Por qué no nos habíamos conocido todavía?) te cuenta su historia de una manera tan "fácil" y con eso me refiero a que conectas con el personaje inmediatamente. Y logra ver a estas maravillosas personas a su alrededor, aquellas de las cuales tenía tanto miedo ver, Dee, amo a Dee, un personaje complejo, demasiado querible.

Y por supuesto Willem. ¿Quién eres? ¿Dónde estás? Y sobre todo ¿Por qué? ¿Qué está mal? ¿Qué escondes? Déjala cuidarte. Es todo lo que puedo decir de él, es lo que sentí en el libro, todo el dolor, la emoción y la incertidumbre.

Si no quedó claro, Just One Day se ha vuelto uno de mis libros favoritos. Un libro que nos enseña como bien lo dice Dee, a no suponer las cosas y saber esperar una respuesta, y sobre todo dejarse llevar por los accidentes. Una completa joya literaria, si no lo has leído, no sé que esperas, este libro te enseñará a amar para luego romperte el corazón.

Reseña Completa: : El Extraño Gato del Cuento

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Primeros pensamientos (18 - 09 - 2013)

Demasiadas emociones, no dormí por leer, me perdí todo un día por leer. Tuve que parar casi en cada párrafo porque simplemente: show less

GUH.

GUH.

GUH.





How do I even begin? I am madly in love with Gayle Foreman and have been since all of Mia's ride in If I Stay/Where She Went.

This book was entirely new and entirely different and I still ate the whole thing in less than six hours, stayed up reading until one or two in the morning because I literally could not put it down and walk away from this book. This book is gorgeous and it handles so much about learning to grow up and be more than a child. How to reach out into the world and start tasting things. People. Life. Choices. Food. Countries. Travel. And, of course, love.

Allyson and Willem's "one day" is a gorgeous, faulted, but very learning filled day. But it is still One Day. One Day to change your life, your self, your show more heart, and how you see the world. Even if that means it might break all of those things into pieces you can no longer recognize when you wake up the morning after it.

My heart went so many different directions in this book. Allyson is compelling. Her learning to break out, her falling under the tide, and her fighting back. Especially her great epiphany at the end, when she realizes everything might not be little girl dreams of rainbows and ponies, but that this entire miracle-and-mistake trial has made her into an amazing human being, capable of so much walking, flying and stumbling. That she's a better person for all of it.



I can't wait to see how Willem's "One Year" went, but I have my grand theory already.

As Dee warned everyone from the reader to Allyson very, very early on, "Stop jumping to conclusions!" show less

Read this in - what else - just one day. It lived up to my expectations (I loved If I Stay and Where She Went), and then some. (Why don't more authors write pairs of books instead of trilogies?) Part One covers the "one day" that Allyson spends with Willem in Paris; Part Two (from p. 143) covers the following year, Allyson's first at college in Cambridge, MA (unstated, but...Harvard?).

Just One Day is a perfect example of a "new adult" book, covering the transition period from high school to college. Allyson is a "good girl" who lets her mother run every detail of her life; her one impulsive day in Paris throws her off course. She enters a downward spiral, getting bad grades in her first semester classes (pre-med classes her mother show more picked out for her), failing to make friends with her roommates, and growing apart from her childhood best friend, Melanie, who is undergoing changes of her own while at college in New York (NYU-Gallatin).

It is thanks to the gentle intervention of a guidance counselor who helps her sign up for some different classes her second semester that Allyson begins to come out of her depression. In a Shakespeare class, she makes her first real friend, the multifaceted Dee. Once she tells him about Paris and Willem - who she has been trying to forget - he convinces her to find him. They get her roommates on board, and that summer Allyson stands up to her parents, refusing internships and working in a local restaurant to earn the money to return to Paris and track Willem down.

In her quest to find Willem, Allyson encounters, and opens up to, a whole crowd of Europeans and travelers, including a helpful bunch of Aussies and the sweet, memorable Wren. She is independent, persistent, flexible, and spontaneous in a way she has never been, which makes it a different kind of travel than the Teen Tours! trip with Melanie the previous summer.

Needless to say, I can't wait for Willem's parallel story in Just One Year.

Quotes:

And again, I hear myself and can hardly believe it. When I was little, I used to go to the local ice-skating rink. In my mind, I always felt like I could twirl and jump, but when I got out onto the ice, I could barely keep my blades straight. When I got older, that's how it was with people: In my mind, I am bold and forthright, but what comes out always seems to be meek and polite....I never quite managed to be that skating, twirling, leaping person I suspected I could be. (24)

...maybe once you open the trapdoor of honesty, there's no going back. (41)

And this is the truth. Because I may be only eighteen, but it already seems pretty obvious that the world is divided into two groups: the doers and the watchers. The people things happen to and the rest of us, who just sort of plod on with things....It never occurred to me that by pretending...I might slip into that other column, even for just a day. (41)

But right now, I have a feeling that this train is not just delivering me to Paris, but to someplace entirely new. (41)

"I think everything is happening all the time, but if you don't put yourself in the path of it, you miss it. When you travel, you put yourself out there. (Willem, 49)

Willem laughs again. The sound is clear and strong as a bell, and it fills me with joy, and it's like, for the first time in my life, I understand that this is the point of laughter, to spread happiness. (83)

"Sometimes you can't know until you know," he says. (Willem, 83)

Down the expanse of [the Seine], I can see a series of arched bridges, draped like expensive bracelets over an elegant wrist. (88)

Is it his nearness that makes the city so intoxicating or the city that makes his nearness so irresistible? (89)

...but his expression has only hardened, fear having been joined by its twin brother, anger. (110)

Part of me knows one more day won't do anything except postpone the heartbreak. But another part of me believes differently. We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day. (130)

Orlando: "For ever and a day."
Rosalind: "Say 'a day' without the 'ever.'" (224)

"Ain't such a line between faking and being." (Dee to Allyson, 225)

"That just makes me a liar."
"No it doesn't. You're just trying on different identities, like everyone in those Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they're already in us. That's why we pretend them in the first place." (Allyson and Dee, 237)

"Even if you find him. Even if he didn't leave you on purpose, he can't possibly live up to the person you've built him into." (Melanie to Allyson, 283)

It's not like the thought hasn't occurred to me. I get that the chances of finding him are small, but the chances of finding him as I remember him are even smaller. But I just keep going back to what my dad always says, about how when you lose something, you have to visualize the last place you had it. And I found - and then lost - so many things in Paris. (283)

[Wren] believes in saints. I believe in accidents. I think we basically believe in the same thing. (350)

He just stands there...looking at me like I am a ghost, which I suppose I am. But if he knows anything at all about Shakespeare, it's that the ghosts always come haunting. (369) show less

“We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love it one day. Anything can happen in just one day.”

I picked up this book because I am a huge fan of Gayle’s previous books, If I Stay and Where She Went, and I wanted to see if I could love this series as much as her previous one. I did love this book, but I guess I put too many expectations on it.

This book is about Allyson Healey meets Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter on a European trip in England. Allyson has always been the sheltered good girl, the one who never takes risks, but this time, when Willem offers her one-day to be “Lulu”, a girl completely different from herself, she accepts. In that day, Lulu and Willem have the time of show more their lives; they share amazing moments together and in the process, even fall in love. When Lulu wakes up the next day, and Willem is gone, she begins to think that maybe she was the only one who felt the connection. Heartbroken, she goes back to America to be Allyson again. What happens when Allyson realizes that being Lulu was a life way better than she imagined? Can she really pick up the pieces and forget what happened between her and Willem?

Allyson (or Lulu) is a great protagonist. She was very relatable, and you couldn’t help but feel just as heartbroken and depressed as she does when Willem disappears. It was nice to see how this book not only concentrated on the romance, but it concentrated on Allyson’s life. About how she’s unhappy and tired of “quitting while she’s ahead”.

This is actually what I liked most of the book. Allyson’s self-discovery and subsequent character growth. I liked how at first she felt helpless to change anything about her life, but then goes and “takes a stand” to live her life how she wants to.

There are some secondary characters that really add a special touch to the book. Dee and Melanie’s stories are great, and I’d actually love to read more about them. Not to mention all the special little characters that actually contributed a lot to Allyson’s journey.

Another aspect of this book that I really liked was the setting. I loved how this was set in little places all over Europe: England, Paris, Amsterdam, Utrecht, etc. It fueled my desire to go visit these places even more! Especially since they were so well explored.

The romance was sweet but heartbreaking. I thought it was a bit clichéd at first, but then I fell in love with it. It was so heartbreaking to find out some things at the end, which definitely changed my views on Willem.

The only problem I really had with this book was how I expected this book to be something like If I Stay, which it wasn’t. This isn’t a bad thing. I’m actually glad the author did something different with this duet.

I was kind of disappointed that the ending left some loose ends, which is why I’m basically hyperventilating to start Just One Year.

Overall, I recommend this series if you like stories of self-discovery, foreign places, and romance. show less

More reviews can be seen at Boricuan Bookworms

“We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love it one day. Anything can happen in just one day.”
-Just One Day by Gayle Forman

I picked up this book because I am a huge fan of Gayle’s previous books, If I Stay and Where She Went, and I wanted to see if I could love this series as much as her previous one. I did love this book, but I guess I put too many expectations on it.

This book is about Allyson Healey meets Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter on a European trip in England. Allyson has always been the sheltered good girl, the one who never takes risks, but this time, when Willem offers her one-day to be “Lulu”, a girl completely show more different from herself, she accepts. In that day, Lulu and Willem have the time of their lives; they share amazing moments together and in the process, even fall in love. When Lulu wakes up the next day, and Willem is gone, she begins to think that maybe she was the only one who felt the connection. Heartbroken, she goes back to America to be Allyson again. What happens when Allyson realizes that being Lulu was a life way better than she imagined? Can she really pick up the pieces and forget what happened between her and Willem?

Allyson (or Lulu) is a great protagonist. She was very relatable, and you couldn’t help but feel just as heartbroken and depressed as she does when Willem disappears. It was nice to see how this book not only concentrated on the romance, but it concentrated on Allyson’s life. About how she’s unhappy and tired of “quitting while she’s ahead”.

This is actually what I liked most of the book. Allyson’s self-discovery and subsequent character growth. I liked how at first she felt helpless to change anything about her life, but then goes and “takes a stand” to live her life how she wants to.

There are some secondary characters that really add a special touch to the book. Dee and Melanie’s stories are great, and I’d actually love to read more about them. Not to mention all the special little characters that actually contributed a lot to Allyson’s journey.

Another aspect of this book that I really liked was the setting. I loved how this was set in little places all over Europe: England, Paris, Amsterdam, Utrecht, etc. It fueled my desire to go visit these places even more! Especially since they were so well explored.

The romance was sweet but heartbreaking. I thought it was a bit clichéd at first, but then I fell in love with it. It was so heartbreaking to find out some things at the end, which definitely changed my views on Willem.

The only problem I really had with this book was how I expected this book to be something like If I Stay, which it wasn’t. This isn’t a bad thing. I’m actually glad the author did something different with this duet.

I was kind of disappointed that the ending left some loose ends, which is why I’m basically hyperventilating to start Just One Year. I MEAN WHAT A WAY TO END A BOOK. THAT WAS JUST PLAIN EVIL.



Just One Year is basically laughing at me and saying, “I’m right here! Pick me pick me!” I well get to you soon, my dear ARC.

Overall, I recommend this series if you like stories of self-discovery, foreign places, and romance.

Rating: 4 stars show less

Allyson Healey has always played by the rules. She did well in school, listened to her parents, hung out with her best friend, and did other extremely predictable things for a high schooler. She never really branched out or went on an adventure...that is until her trip abroad the summer before college. Her parents sent her and her best friend on a tour of Europe and Allyson was feeling pretty bored on this trip despite being in Europe. While in London, Allyson and her best friend watch an underground performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and an actor from the play, Willem, catches her eye and they have a connection of some sort. This connection blossoms into an overnight adventure; Allyson breaks the rules and goes to Willem to show more Paris on this last night of her trip. She knows her parents would be furious and she knows it dangerous to go with someone she just met, but she wants to live a little. The whole day in Paris is magical, but the next day doesn't go as well. She can't find Willem anywhere. and consequently, she finds herself stranded in Paris and must get back to London in time to catch her flight home. Readers will follow Allyson after this heartbreaking day and all through her freshman year in college where she still can't shake the memories of her night in Paris with mysterious Willem. Gayle Forman's Just One Day is a heart-wrenching tale of first love, the freedom that travel brings, and the trials and tribulations of discovering what you want out of life.

I will admit that I found Allyson to be taxing at times. She was tough to connect to, but I could appreciate her story nonetheless. That's why I adore Forman as an author, because readers can still find something to enjoy in her books, even if they don't relate to the characters. Once Allyson started to gain confidence, I found myself enjoying her more and more.

Willem is such a great male lead. He's mysterious, talented, good looking, and adventurous. While he wasn't in the story very long, I found myself, along with Allyson, wondering about him long after he exited stage right. Just One Day is much more of a mystery than I thought it would be and I really liked that aspect of the book.

Also, Just One Day is really about self-discovery. Allyson is at that age where she isn't sure who she is or what she wants out of life. She listens to her parents (too often!), pretends to be someone she isn't, and lets her mother orchestrate her life - (her mother even tells her what classes to take at college!) Allyson has to break free from her parents and really put herself out there at college. Once she does, I found Just One Day to be unputdownable. While she is "finding herself," always in the back of her mind is Willem and while they only spent one day together, I couldn't let him go either.

Just One Day has a lot of traveling in it, which is another aspect of this book that I enjoyed. You can learn so much about yourself and about the world when you travel. I loved reading about Allyson's adventures, which force her to leave her comfort zone. It reminded me a bit of Wanderlove and 13 Little Blue Envelopes.

Lastly, Forman incorporates a lot of Shakespeare into Just One Day and being an English teacher, I loved that! It truly demonstrates how timeless Shakespeare is and how many years later, readers can still relate to his characters and the themes. One of my favorite parts of Just One Day is the Shakespeare class Allyson takes at college. Sign me up for that class!

Just One Day didn't leave me a blubbering mess like If I Stay did and while it isn't as powerful, Just One Day is just as good, but in a different way. It's going down as one of my favorite reads of the year and after the ending of Just One Day, which left my heart beating out of my chest, I cannot wait for Just One Year. In sum, Forman has hit a home run once again. show less

After loving (and perhaps because of loving) Forman’s previous books, If I Stay and Where She Went, I felt great disappointment over this one.

It’s a story about Allyson Healey, 18, who has lived her whole life closely managed by her caring but uber-helicopter mom. She never really experiences any freedom. For just one day, however, she happens to “escape” by impulsively leaving a “teen tour” of Europe and then spending the time in Paris with a handsome Dutch Shakespearean actor named Willem.

Thereafter, Allyson is never the same. And now it is we, the readers, who are never free: of the expressions of angst, the obsession with Willem (who everyone says is a womanizing cad anyway), the identity crises, the endless permutations show more of “who am I really?”, and the inevitable journey to Oz to get back her courage.

Discussion: There is a great deal of heavy-handedness in this novel. With the help of a character who is a college Shakespeare teacher, Forman goes for didacticism and repetition to anvil onto our heads – over and over - the themes of confused identity in Shakespeare’s plays, and the correspondences to Allyson’s life. [Here is just one of the many, many examples, as Professor Glenny talks about “As You Like It”]: "The line between true self and feigned self is blurred on all sides. Which I think is a rather handy metaphor for falling in love.”

When Allyson, endlessly ruminating on her one day with Willem, has one of her many “epiphanies” late in the book, saying “Maybe it was just pretend. But at some point, it stopped being pretend,” I wanted to yell to her, “at some point”: get over it!!!!!!!”

Evaluation: The main character in this “coming of age” novel takes “only” a year to grow, but to this reader, it felt like eons. (I would call it "A Coming of Jurassic Age" novel.)

Note: There is to be a sequel, presenting the story from Willem’s point of view. Let’s hope he’s more interesting. show less