I don’t normally read romance, but this winter I just felt at a possibly all-time low, and I wanted something light, something hopeful, something happy, something easy. This book was making the rounds, had been picked for Reese Witherspoon’s book club (not that I follow that, but a few of her other picks appealed to me), and just seemed enough like Love Actually to make me hope I would enjoy it for sheer escapism.
This is the story of nearly-was. Laurie is on the bus one day and sees a man at the bus stop. She has this sudden, intense urge to know him, to get off the bus and find a reason to talk to him. But she doesn’t, and as the bus starts moving down the street, she begins to regret her decision to stay on it. That regret grows into an obsession, and she seems to lose herself in the fantasy of what might have happened, who the man might have been.
She proceeds to look for him everywhere she goes, spending a year hoping to see him again. She even recruits her best friend and roommate Sarah to her cause, describing the man to her and getting her to help scan every public space they enter, looking for the mystery man. But she doesn’t find him, and eventually she starts to give up on him and move on with her life.
But of course, that’s not the end of the story. Her roommate meets a guy, is head over heels for him, and brings him to their new year’s eve party. And, of course, it’s the man from the bus stop.
This is where it all started to go wrong for me. First of all, Sarah was in on the search. She knew what the guy looked like, so how did it not occur to her that this could be the guy? Why didn’t she snap a photo to show Laurie, given how invested she had also become in the cause?
Then a second thing I hate in books – when the characters don’t do the simple and obvious thing that would remove all drama. So of course, Laurie doesn’t tell Sarah that her new boyfriend is the guy. And everything from that point gets messy and complicated.
The last and most difficult aspect for me is that you’re set up to root for Laurie and her bus stop guy, right? I mean that’s the story we started with, Laurie is the character we are viewing things through, and we’re supposed to buy into her fantasy of this perfect romance. But he’s taken, and not only that, but he’s taken by someone she loves and cares about. So rooting for her and the guy to get together means rooting for her friend to be hurt, and possibly for the guy to do something horrible thus proving him not to be the hero she’s built him up to be. It’s a self-defeating premise for me, since I cannot get behind love stories where one person is already in a relationship. It just doesn’t work for me.
And it’s just so drawn out and messy and ridiculous. I wanted to know what was going to happen, but then when I found out what happened I kind of wished I hadn’t. It didn’t go well for anyone, myself included. It was so hard to care about any of the characters in this book, and impossible to root for any of the relationships to work out.
All that said, it’s possible I’m just really not the reader this book was written for. I find it hard to suspend all disbelief and root for a relationship that neither seems realistic nor a good idea. And it just happened to be built on a premise I cannot get behind, so it wasn’t going to work for me no matter what.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad book, particularly if you like this kind of story. I liked the settings, I liked some of the side relationships in the story, and I think the only relationship I could root for in the story was the friendship between Laurie and Sarah, and I do like it when there’s a strong female friendship in a book, particularly one that also attempts to pit women against each other. But all in all, it just didn’t give me the warm, cosy feeling I was going for, and it’s definitely not one I’d ever go back to again.
Two people. Ten chances. One unforgettable love story.
Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn’t exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there’s a moment of pure magic… and then her bus drives away.
Certain they’re fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn’t find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they “reunite” at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It’s Jack, the man from the bus. It would be.
What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness. – Goodreads
Book Title: One Day In December
Author: Josie Silver
Series: No
Edition: Paperback
Published By: Broadway Books
Released: October 16, 2018
Genre: Fiction, Romance
Pages: 416
Date Read: December 16-24, 2018
Rating: 4/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.08/5 (40,448 ratings)