bumblingbookworm
Written on Apr 22, 2020
Just One Day. Just One Year. Just One Read.
Before you find out how their story ends, remember how it began....
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.
- ISBN10 0525425926
- ISBN13 9780525425922
- Publish Date 10 October 2013
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Dutton Books for Young Readers
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 336
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780525425922
Reviews
jeannamichel
Written on Aug 9, 2015
girlinthepages
Written on Mar 30, 2015
And you should too. It’s not a spoiler, but a fact, and it will save you a LOT of frustration if you know that the synopsis is extremely misleading-it does not in fact “pick up” where Just One Day ended, rather it tells the story of the year Allison spent in Just One Day from Willem’s perspective. Once you’ve accepted that you’re not going to get much in terms of closure, you can appreciate this book for what it is: A year’s journey of self discovery for a male protagonist set against a vibrant travel background.
Willem’s journey was different from Allison’s but still compelling.
Allyson’s journey really emotionally resonated with me because I could relate to the emotional roller coaster that is moving away for the first time to go to college, and struggling to find your independence from your parents. Willem’s journey was a little more subtle in its emotions, as Willem spends a lot of time avoiding, accepting, and eventually striving to change the aspects about himself and reputation he’s acquired, such as being flaky, overly flirty, and a womanizer. Readers are also thrust right into Willem’s family struggles without much of an explanation, and through the story will suss out the broken dynamics between Willem and Bram and Yael, his estranged parents who still haunt his thoughts and actions every day. The family aspect in this duology was fantastic, as multiple generations of family members play a role in both Willem and Allyson’s lives. Yet reading about Willem’s parents love story, and how he often feels like an unwanted footnote in it, was quietly powerful in a way that Allyson’s obnoxiously overbearing parents were not. Also, this book is rife with parallelism; Willem and Allyson’s story draws almost eerie parallels to Bram and Yael’s, and by the end both relationships fit this multi-generational love story like a perfectly crafted puzzle.
I loved the travel aspect.
Willem travels a lot: to run away from his problems, to find Lulu, to avoid himself, and to find a home. The changing scenery had me flipping pages, curious to where he would visit next, but the people he met were truly what impressed me about this book. From a chance meeting with Shakespearean director Kate in the-middle-of-nowhere Mexico to befriending a Bollywood casting agent in India, the cast of characters Willem encounters feels authentic, not just like paper cut outs to fill the story. Each person he encounters also gives him some perspective on his feelings about Lulu and about himself: who he wants to be and who others expect him to be, until he eventually becomes tired of the charade of being Willem instead of just being him. Thus, Forman ties in the Shakespearean theme of pretending into both Allyson’s and Willem’s stories.
The “almost” moments were sweetly unbearable
It was excruciating at some points to see JUST HOW CLOSE Willem and Allyson came to meeting again, only to miss each other by the littlest of moments or the most menial lack of action. It was sort of the ultimate “Little Mermaid Syndrome” (you know, that scene from “Kiss the Girl” when they are THAT CLOSE TO KISSING and Ariel getting her voice back, and the eels interrupt them? But no matter how many times you watch you’re filled with hope that THIS ONE TIME it will happen? I refer to situations like those as “Little Mermaid Syndrome.”) I think the hardest one for me was when he finally got the contact info for the coordinator on Allison’s trip who would have known exactly who “Lulu” was, but decided it was just another dead end and didn’t follow up with her.
Overall: If you’re looking for a sequel, an “after,” this book will infuriate you. But if you’re looking for a well-written journey of self-discovery through an authentic male point of view, then Just One Year hits the mark. While not as emotionally evocative as Just One Day, it was really a unique experience to get to see the other side of such a powerful story, and the parallelism between two generations is done really well in this novel.
Angie
Written on Dec 3, 2014
After that initial chapter, I did settle into Just One Year and really enjoyed it. Just like Allyson, Willem compiles everything he knows about her and uses it to try to track her down. He starts with her suitcase that she left behind, leaving her a note, in hopes that she'll retrieve her luggage. This totally made me inwardly scream, since of course she does, but doesn't find his notes! Ah! Even worse was when he remembered her family spends the holidays in Mexico and he's there and she's there and they miss each other! Nice touch with that sandwich joke though! So many near misses and coincidences! It drove me nuts, but in a good way!
Then Just One Year ends exactly where Allyson's story ended, but we get one little tidbit to tack onto the conclusion of their story. It's not a definitive statement, but I found it satisfying all the same. I'd like to image things went in one direction from that point, but it's equally possible that it went somewhere else entirely, which I would also be okay with. I love that kind of ending. It's open, but not so wide that you can't imagine the possibilities.
Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.
Sam@WLABB
Written on Nov 9, 2014
Oh, Gayle Forman, I love you so much. You always give me the feels. You have an uncanny ability to answer all my questions. You craft these beautifully broken, soulful and romantic characters. You make me happy.
This is the companion book to "Just One Day", where we met Allyson and Willem and were introduced to their epic one day romance. Where most of "Just One Day" tackles how Allyson's life was affected by their day in Paris, "Just One Year" tells us what happened to Willem. We don't only learn what he did after that fateful day, but we also learn a lot more about Willem, what drove his decisions, what he was running from with his two years of continuous travel.
It was so beautiful and poetic. I loved it.
Nessa Luna
Written on Jun 14, 2014
“Have you been gone for so long you’ve forgotten how to drink and drive a bike? How can you even call yourself Dutch anymore?”
In Just One Day, we read the story of Allyson, aka ‘Lulu’, who has an amazing day in Paris with the Dutch Willem. But the next morning, she wakes up all alone, Willem is nowhere to be found. Throughout the rest of the book, Allyson tries to both forget and find Willem, and at the end of the book we see that she does. But what has Willem done in that year? The answer to that question will be answered in Just One Year, the same story but from Willem’s point of view. We read of his journey to find his ‘Lulu’ again, of his travels and his acting. Of his friends, his (potential) lovers, and of his parents. If you haven’t read Just One Day, this review might have some minor spoilers.
I loved Just One Day, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the sequel. But like so many other sequels, I postponed buying/reading Just One Year for a while. Not as long as normally, sometimes it takes me months or even years to read the following book in a series, but this time it only took me about five/six months. Still, that’s quite a while, but for me it’s short! Like I probably said before, I am not a huge fan of romance books, but JOD and JOY both grabbed me right from the start. Maybe it was the fact that Willem is Dutch, like me, and all the mentions of Dutch things, such as hagelslag, broodjes and a ‘white tower that looks like a giant penis’. But of course, I just liked way the story was written as well!
What I liked:
I liked all the traveling. Willem loves traveling, and he hates being stuck in one place for too long. But due to certain circumstances he stays in Amsterdam and/or Utrecht for at least half of the book. The other half, he is traveling to Mexico, to Mumbai, and not entirely without reason. He is trying to find his Lulu, but he doesn’t remember her real name. I personally thought all the Dutch things were very well written, because it happens a lot that when someone wants to show that a person is Dutch and they do it all wrong (by making them sound German mostly). This book actually corrects that (there have been a couple of times where Willem told people that he’s Dutch, not German). A tiny pet peeve of mine, is that they kept calling the Netherlands ‘Holland’. Yes, that might be a bit easier to type than ‘The Netherlands’ the entire time, but Holland really is just two of the provinces (North and South Holland).
We meet a lot of new characters in this book, including some of Willem’s friends. Robert-Jan, aka Broodje (sandwhich) was my favourite. He’s Willem’s best friend, and he’s just really awesome. In JOD he is described as a Hobbit, and that is what I pictured the entire time I read JOY; a Dutch hobbit named Broodje. There is also Henk and W, who is dating Lien, and a lot of other Dutch characters. All the Dutch names just made me incredibly happy, and also made me laugh out loud because it made me wonder how non-Dutch people were pronouncing them in their heads. There are also some of Willem’s ex girlfriends (or well, not sure if they were really girlfriends or just ‘flings’) and there was one in particular which just made me cringe. And there are the people that Willem meets on his new journeys, including Kate, which is my favourite. She helped him near the end of the book, for the play in het Vondelpark, where Allyson went to see him near the end of JOD.
I have to admit, I am a bit jealous of Willem, because he’s able to just travel anywhere he wants, whenever he wants. I wish I could do that sometimes, just pack a bag with just some clothes, money, a toothbrush, my phone, maybe a notebook and a camera, and just randomly pick a place to go to. Because that is what Willem was doing – or was planning on doing – at the beginning of the book. Though he is a traveler, he spends at least half of the story in the Netherlands, mostly in Amsterdam or Utrecht, but that didn’t bother me a lot, because I just loved reading about my country from the perspective of someone who wasn’t from here (I mean the author, of course). I have to say it again, Gayle Forman did a great job.
The writing in JOY was very good, but I hadn’t expected anything else. I loved JOD and If I Stay (still need to read Where She Went though, oops). It was so well written, that it took me less than twelve hours to finish the book, something I haven’t had in a while, I think.
What I didn’t like:
I have to say, there weren’t really things I disliked about this book, apart from the fact that sometimes Allyson and Willem were so close to seeing each other again, and then they didn’t. It actually made me a bit sad, haha. Also, the ending was quite disappointing, in my opinion (and I think almost everyone who’s read the book agrees with me). Because (spoiler? I think), it ends just the same as Just One Day, with them finding each other again in Amsterdam and that’s it. End of story. But, in answer to that, Gayle Forman has written ‘Just One Night’ a 40 page novella about what happens after this book, and I am reading it right now!
Conclusion:
I loved Just One Year, absolutely loved it. Together with the first book, I think this series made me want to read more (well written) romance books. Yes, you heard it right, I am starting to like romance more, all thanks to Willem and Allyson (even though their relationship was kind of insta-love, which is still something I despise). If you want to read a nice story about love, one that is not a trilogy, you should definitely read Just One Day and Just One Year!
Jo
Written on Mar 6, 2014
After finishing Just One Day, I was so eager to read Just One Year! Just One Day was so beautiful and inspiring, I was sure I was going to get more of the same from Just One Year, Willem's book. What I got was not what I expected, but just as wonderful!
Just One Year covers the year after Willem met Lulu (Allyson) in Paris. When he is attacked by skinheads and hospitalised, he is late to return to Lulu at the artist squat, and when he does return, concussed and confused but desperate to find her, she has gone. As time goes by, Willem discovers he cannot forget or move past that one beautiful day with Lulu, and as he travels from Paris to Holland, Mexico to India, he realises she has changed his life.
As it's from his point of view, we get to know Willem a whole lot better in Just One Year, and I was surprised at who I came to know. Apart from a few glimpses of things he was hiding, Willem seemed to free-spirited, not a care in the world, floating where ever the wind blew him and loving life. In actual fact, Willem is grieving. Bram, his father, died three years ago, and after flunking out of school, he ran from his troubles by going from one country to the next. The reason Willem was to return to Holland rather than go to Paris with Allyson? Because his mother, Yael, was selling the houseboat that was his home, and as she was in India, she needed him to sign the forms. He was to go home, to finalise the sale of the place he grew up, where all his memories of his father are. It doesn't help that his relationship with Yael is pretty non-existent. When Bram died, she locked herself away with her grief for three weeks before moving to India, leaving 18-year-old Willem to deal with his own grief alone. Willem is lost and hurting, and constantly running from pain.
But Lulu has changed him. In her way, she showed him what it's like to have someone around who cares, and her way of looking at things, so opposed to his, changed his way of thinking. She opened his eyes, without realising it, to what life is really about, what his life has been missing. And he wants that back. To the point that he searches for her, too - just like she did. And although he doesn't find her until she finds him, he finds her in other things; Shakespeare, acting, purpose, life.
There are near-misses, there are moments of pure beauty when Willem thinks about her and what a difference a day can make, what can happen in a day, and how much he loves her. With wonderful stories from the past about his parents and his grandfather, with the wonderful people he meets along the way, Just One Year is such a fantastic book! Beautiful, romantic, but quite different from Just One Day, because Allyson and Willem are two very different people. I really cannot express how much I love these two books. The world needs more real, affecting romance like this.
Thank you to RHCP via NetGalley for the eProof.
Suz @ Bookish Revelations
Written on Oct 25, 2013
Just One Year broke my feels in so many wonderful heartfelt aching ways. I found myself connect with Willem's story so much easier than it was for me to connect with Allyson's in Just One Day. It was so tragic and filled with despair, that I found myself at times, wanting to wrap my arms around him just to keep him in place for just one moment in time instead of always running away and holding back so much of who he was. He simply isn't the jerk that readers were left to think he was at the end of Just One Day, he was so much more than that, broken in so many ways that were unimaginable and still trying to hold himself together. His life and the person he wanted to be, was so affected by that one day he spent in Paris with his Lulu.
By the time I was finished reading this book, I simply marveled at the way Forman was able to take a character that I had originally disliked by the end of Just One Day, and had given him so much depth and complicated layers of pain that I couldn't help but love him in spite of how things had originally appeared. The moment in the novel where he finally broke down and called his mother, saying that he needed her was a real turning point for me. It was absolutely heartbreaking to see the two of them work through resolving their issues and grief, in order to make their relationship stronger and more healthy. Love in many forms played an intricate role in Just One Year and it was beautiful to see how it unfolded in its many manifestations, love of a long time friend, being inspired by a stranger who becomes a new friend, experiencing your life being altered by just one day with someone who "stains" you forever, familial love that is both lost and grieved and repaired.
Gayle Forman has a beautiful way with words of wisdom and self-reflection that lends such an emotional tone to the novel. Just One Year is a gorgeous character study on losing everything there is about yourself, only to find it reflected back in the eyes of the person who challenges and inspires you to find yourself. When an author is able to tap into that much emotion, it is a true mark of greatness in the words they have written. Beautifully thought provoking and bittersweet, this novel is a definite must read. I realize that it is a companion novel to Just One Day, but the emotional impact that this novel had on me personally has made it one of my top favorite books read this year.
If you are looking for one of those rare books that will stay with you, something gorgeously profound and poignant in all of the right ways a novel of this kind should be, then Just One Year is a book that I would recommend a place on your shelf. Bittersweet and powerfully emotional, you will not want to miss a minute of this diamond in a mountain of gold.
Amanda
Written on Oct 20, 2013
And what a journey it is.
After walking through Allyson's world and her year, I came to this book apprehensively. Like I wasn't sure what I'd find and not positive I'd like it once I did. But as Willem's story unravels, I came to understand him -- right as he learned himself too. And it's not a painless story; it hurts. Even though it hurts, it's a necessary hurt. Like Allyson, Willem had to work through his own demons.
My only regret is that I didn't read Just One Day and Just One Year back to back. It's been ten months since I read Just One Day, and though I adored Just One Year, I know, by the very fact I had to pull my copy of Just One Day off the shelf and reread parts of it, that it would have been even better had I read both books closer together.
Even so, I already want to reread both these books. Gayle Forman flays me with her stories. They're the kind of stories that stick with you long after you read them -- the kind that the more you think of them, the more you fall in love with them.
e_rodz_leb
Written on Oct 13, 2013