Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn’t exist. After all, life isn’t a scene from the movies, is it?
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.
Laurie thinks she’ll never see the boy from the bus again. But at their Christmas party a year later, her best friend Sarah introduces her to the new love of her life. Who is, of course, the boy from the bus.
Determined to let him go, Laurie gets on with her life. But what if fate has other plans?
Genre: Romantic Fiction
Number of Pages: 464
Date of Publication: 18/10/2018
Author/Illustrator/Publisher:
Josie Silver is the author of the book. ‘One Day in December’ was her debut novel and has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.
The publisher is Penguin Random House.
Rating: 3/5
Review:
This is a romantic book which tells the story of Laurie and how she fell in love with a boy who she saw from the second deck of a bus out the window and how their destiny’s crossed paths again.
The story is told over 10 years during which we see the characters grow and learn about each of them. In the story we meet Laurie who is the protagonist. Jack is the ‘bus boy’ and boyfriend of Sarah who is Laurie’s best friend.
Josie did a good job describing situations and places. She does have a unique writing style and it is really nice to get to read her debut novel. There were parts of the book that I really like, such as some deep conversations that some of the characters have but also some scenes that were just ordinary situations like trying to find a job and having a hard time. This story made me feel many different emotions. I wanted to be sad along with some characters or angry at others so the story was something of an emotional rollercoaster.
I really wanted to love this book as I was looking for a cheesy read during the Christmas holiday so this seemed like the perfect read. Despite this enthusiasm it took me a while to get into the book. I felt that the beginning was a bit slow and that the characters didn’t have a lot of personality to begin with although they do mature with the story. There is a long period of time that the author wanted to cover in the story and this was often achieved with time jumps that seemed a bit long and a times this made me want to skip some pages as I didn’t feel invested in the story after a situation was only set up with ‘six months later’. I feel important plot points and character development happened in the gaps. I would never skip pages but I did feel tempted. I also felt that every situation was very predictable and having a neat love triangle for each of the characters made me feel a bit uneasy. I wouldn’t say that any of these setups felt forced or unrealistic but when it happens in such a similar way with each of the characters it kind of made me question the likelihood of the situation.
Would I recommend to read this book? Every single person has their own opinions and while I gave this book a 3 stars there are a lot of people who absolutely love the story. Some people dislike romance novels due to the predictable overly dramatic behaviour and characters with very little of importance going on in their lives except the ‘romance’ and all of these sins are very present in this story. That said if you enjoy or at least can forgive these clichés the quality of the writing is very solid. So if you are a diehard romance fan then do give this book a chance at any time of the year and you might find that you do love the book.
Availability: The book is available in all good bookshops
Shelf Life 
Leave a Reply