Book Review: One Day in December by Josie Silver #OneDayInDecember #BookReview #Christmas

Title: One Day in December

Author: Josie Silver

Publisher: Penguin

Date: October 18th, 2018

Pages: 417

Format: eARC

Source: from Publisher for a review

Synopsis (from Goodreads): A love story about what happens after you meet, or rather, don’t meet the one.

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.

Review:

Warning: This book talks about love at first sight.

Pure and simple: I loved this book.

…and to be honest with you, it took me by surprise how much I loved it. It was a perfect book to read, with beautiful writing and fascinating story with feels that gave me shivers.

The story follows Laurie who, one day in December, sees a boy and falls in love. They didn’t talk, she knows nothing about him, but the chemistry and the connection they had by just looking at each other is too strong to forget.
She spends a year dreaming about that boy, trying to find him and believing they were made for each other.
One day, a year later, she happens to meet him, but as her best friend’s boyfriend.
Laurie keeps her secret with her because she doesn’t want to ruin her friendship with Sarah. However, erasing Jack from her heart is not an easy task.

Going into this book I thought it’ll be a quick, easy read. Boy, was I wrong!
I mean, reading this book was pure pleasure, but it was not a light read.
It talks about love, life and human relationships, and if you ask me, it stands somewhere on the edge between women’s fiction and general fiction.

We follow our characters during a decade and we see what they went through during that period of time.

This is pitched as a love story, and it is a love story, but it doesn’t talk only about romantic love.
It talks about different shapes of love: platonic love, love between lovers, friends, parents and children.

It also talks about grief, falling apart, life taking you different directions, marriage and human interactions.

The writing style is beautiful. Some scenes were so emotional and it takes talent to engage readers in a way Silver did.

The story is written in first person, following two POVs: Laurie’s and Jack’s.

The Christmas setting is captured excellently and the novel really gives you that festive vibe, even if the story itself doesn’t take time only during Christmas.

The only thing I wish for is an epilogue. I loved how the story ended, but I think with two, three pages more that talk about some time later it would be even better.

I loved this book so much more then I thought I would. It is now one of my favorite Christmas stories, if not even my favorite, and I would recommend it to everyone who believes (or want to believe) in love at first sight, likes to read about friendships and life twists and turns.

It’s a brilliant piece of fiction.