Just One Day (Just One Day Series #1)

by Gayle Forman

Overview

From the New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay

Allyson Healey's life is exactly like her suitcase—packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything she’s not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform Allyson’s life.
 
A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the “accidents” of fate, Just One Day shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost. . . and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know.
 The first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willem’s story—Just One Year—is coming soon!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780142422953
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	08/20/2013
Series:	Just One Day Series , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	134,197
Product dimensions:	5.74(w) x 8.08(h) x 1.06(d)
Lexile:	HL750L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Gayle Forman is an award-winning, internationally bestselling author and journalist. She is the author of Just One Day and Just One Year, and the companion e-novella Just One Night, as well as the New York Times bestsellers If I Stay and Where She Went. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughters.

Read an Excerpt

     He doesn't show up until act two. He's playing Sebastian, Viola's twin brother, thought dead. Which makes a certain sense, because by the time he does arrive, I am beginning to think he never really existed, that I've merely conjured him.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Just One Day"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Gayle Forman.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Young Readers Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Just One Day:

“Offering mystery, drama, and an evocative portrait of unrequited love, this open-ended novel will leave fans eagerly anticipating the companion story.” --Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Absorbing.” --Kirkus

“I didn’t just like JUST ONE DAY – I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED, LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it!” --Indie Bookseller

“Terrific—Gayle Forman does it again! Just the sort of experience that pulls so many adults back to teen books.” --Indie bookseller

“Just One Day was a bittersweet story that entranced me, took hold of my heart, and gave it a great big squeeze! My heart still aches.” --Goodreads

“Gayle Forman gets it so, so right (again). It made my heart hurt and hope. This book is magic.” –Indie bookseller

Accolades for If I Stay:
- New York Times Bestseller
- ALA Best Books for Young Adult
- ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers
- Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year

“Every moment I spent reading Forman’s masterpiece drew me in more.” –NPR

"Beautifully written." --Entertainment Weekly

"Achingly satisfying." --Family Circle

Accolades for Where She Went:
- New York Times Bestseller
- Amazon Best Book of the Month (April 2011)
- YALSA’s 2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults List (BFYA)
- A PW Best Children’s Book of 2011

“An achingly gorgeous portrayal of rejection and rekindled love.” –USA Today

“A page-turner, tearjerker and romance all in one.” –BookPage

"Pitch-perfect...a moving, skillfully crafted novel." --VOYA, starred review

Editorial Reviews

[Forman’s] very good on travel’s expansive effects, the fluidity of teenage identity and the yearning for reinvention, how fleeting encounters can transform us.”

 

— New York Times Book Review

* “Offering mystery, drama, and an evocative portrait of unrequited love, this open-ended novel will leave fans eagerly anticipating the companion story.”

 

— Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Reading like a teen version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, this tale of romance and mystery engages readers and will cause them to examine their definitions of love and self-identity."

 

— SLJ, starred review

"As [Allyson] blossoms a. . . the novel becomes absorbing, and readers will find themselves rooting for Allyson’s more autonomous and interesting self."

 

— Kirkus Reviews

"Romantics will get swept up in the story, which has it all: true love, Paris, Shakespeare, and yes, hte notion that 'anything can happen in just one day.'"

 

— Booklist

From the Publisher

"Reading like a teen version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, this tale of romance and mystery engages readers and will cause them to examine their definitions of love and self-identity."

starred review SLJ

[Forman’s] very good on travel’s expansive effects, the fluidity of teenage identity and the yearning for reinvention, how fleeting encounters can transform us.

New York Times Book Review

"Romantics will get swept up in the story, which has it all: true love, Paris, Shakespeare, and yes, hte notion that 'anything can happen in just one day.'"

Booklist

The love story in Forman’s If I Stay and Where She Went was wrapped in the finality of death. This story—about the romance between Allyson, a recent high school grad, and Willem, a handsome Dutch actor she meets during a whirlwind tour of Europe—is built around uncertainty and a kind of loss that’s more akin to an open wound. Upon meeting, the two take an impulsive trip to Paris, but Willem disappears and Allyson is left stranded. Back in the U.S., Allyson is unable to wipe Willem from her mind, and her carefully planned future takes unexpected turns. In a romance that never quite answers the question “Whatever happened to Willem?” Forman explores how travel can lead to surprises and a redefinition of self. In college, Allyson breaks away from her mother’s expectations, realizes her passion for theater and language, and tries to gather clues about Willem’s whereabouts. Offering mystery, drama, and an evocative portrait of unrequited love, this open-ended novel will leave fans eagerly anticipating the companion story—written from Willem’s perspective—due in fall 2013. Ages 14–up. Agent: Sarah Burnes, the Gernert Company. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Gr 9 Up—"We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day." Allyson's life has been carefully planned out by her well-intentioned, but overbearing parents, even her graduation present of an educational tour of Europe. Everything that makes Allyson "Allyson"-from choosing her hobby of vintage-clock collecting to selecting what her college major will be-has been orchestrated by her mother. So when, after a chance encounter with a young man named Willem, the 18-year-old rebels and ditches a performance of the Royal Shakespeare Company to see "Guerilla Will," live Shakespeare performed in a London park, even her friend Melanie is surprised. Shedding her good-girl cloak and adopting the nickname "Lulu," Allyson decides to spend a day in Paris with Willem, an actor from the theater troupe. She surprises herself with her bold and adventuresome behavior during their time together, not the least of which includes having sex in an artist's squat. When Allyson wakes up the next day to find Willem gone, she returns home but can't shake him or the whole day from her memory. After a tumultuous freshman year, she saves up enough money to return to Europe and track down Willem to get closure. In the process of finding him, Allyson discovers herself, which may have been the point of the trip all along. Reading like a teen version of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (Viking, 2006), this tale of romance and mystery engages readers and will cause them to examine their definitions of love and self-identity.—Nicole Knott, Watertown High School, CT

School Library Journal

At the end of a European tour for teens the summer before college, a rules-following, 18-year-old girl impulsively travels to Paris with a handsome Shakespearean actor, a one-day adventure that becomes the catalyst for big changes in the way she sees herself and her place in the world. Nicely integrating the work of Shakespeare as a thematic jumping-off place, author Forman explores "the line between true self and feigned self," the multiple personae, roles and identities that coexist in a single soul. After Allyson, the dutiful, emotionally muted daughter of a pulmonologist father and helicopter mother, finally breaks out and has a romantic adventure with aforesaid handsome actor, she wakes up alone. She feels betrayed and played, precipitating a hard-to-buy psychological crisis. Once in college, Allyson finds herself unengaged by the pre-med curriculum her parents designed. Although she feels trapped by their expectations, with the support of classmate Dee (who tiptoes through various identities and roles himself) Allyson begins the business of figuring out who she is and what she wants. As she blossoms and emerges from her tedious depression, the novel becomes absorbing, and readers will find themselves rooting for Allyson's more autonomous and interesting self. An overlong coming-of-age novel that takes forever to get going but soars at the finish. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews