Saturday 3 January 2015

Review: Just One Year (Just One Day #2) by Gayle Forman

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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.


El

2 comments:

  1. 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.

    Danica Page@Taking It One Page at a Time

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    Replies
    1. I hope you like both books, let me know what you think of it :)

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