Title: Just One Year
Author: Gayle Forman
Series: Just One Day
Publisher: Dutton Books
Publication date: October 10th 2013
Pages: 323 (paperback)
Source: own-it
When he opens his eyes, Willem doesn't know where in the world he is - Prague or Dubrovnik or back in Amsterdam. All he knows is that he is once again alone, and that he needs to find a girl named Lulu. They shared one magical day in Paris, and something about that day - that girl - makes Willem wonder if they aren't fated to be together. He travels all over the world, from Mexico to India, hoping to reconnect with her. But as months go by and Lulu remains elusive, Willem starts to question if the hand of fate is as strong as he'd thought...
The romantic, emotional companion to Just One Day, this is a story of the choices we make and the accidents that happen - and the happiness we can find when the two intersect.
Just One Day left me with a craving for more and I was
really curious too find out what had happened to Willem during the year that he
and Allison were apart.
Just One Year didn’t disappoint one bit. It completely lived
up to my expectations. Forman is an amazing author, she never stops surprising
me. One of the things that I loved the most about this book is that we got to
know Willem a lot better. In Just One Day
he was a mystery and I couldn’t wait to find out who he really was. In this
book we finally got to know this complex character bit by bit. We knew he
travelled a lot from the first book but now we finally know why he started
travelling in the first place. Together with Willem we visited a lot of places;
Amsterdam, Utrecht, Paris, Mexico,
Mumbai. All in quest to find the girl he met and only knew for one day. But
he doesn’t realize that he hast to find himself before he can find her. Willem was a really deep character and we only
got a glimpse of that in the first book. Just
One Year shows how he became that person, what made him who he was at the moment
Allyson met him. And then how meeting Allyson changed him.
We also got
the meet a lot of new people, I loved them all. They were all so energetic,
they pulled the novel in various directions and they made the story so much livelier.
I really loved that his friends helped him on his quest to find “Lulu” and that
they didn’t question him when he said that it was important. A lot of other
people could have thought that he was crazy for finding this girl he only knew
for one day.
There was
another small thing that I really liked in this book. Forman made a
cross-reference to Adam from If I Stay,
when Willem went to his concert and after he was playing his cd over and over
again. I think that it’s great that she didn’t forget about the characters from
her previous books.
It’s a shame that Willem and Allyson’s story is over. I really enjoyed their journeys and I wouldn’t mind if they got another book that portrayed their lives after this book. But I realize why Forman decided to end it like this, the story is complete and I can imagine how their story continued from here. I really loved Just One Year and I can’t wait to read other books by Gayle Forman, she’s an amazing author and she’s probably one of my favorite authors at the moment.
Great review. I've been meaning to read this one. I'm about to start "Just One Day," Reading this review makes me really excited to read the first one. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteDanica Page@Taking It One Page at a Time
I hope you like both books, let me know what you think of it :)
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