Maybe One Day

by Melissa Kantor

[Angie]

Maybe One Day would have been much more enjoyable if it weren't for the narrator. I really just did not like Zoe, and would have preferred to have anyone else tell this story but her. Olivia, her best friend who is dying from cancer, would have been a great choice, and would have made for a stronger emotional connection. However, as it is, I couldn't connect with Zoe at all, and she's definitely not the type of person I would want to be around. I do enjoy unlikeable characters when they make sense, but she didn't. It was hard to care about her situation when every other thought she has was mean, dumb, or just nonsense.

I first suspected that Zoe was going to be a problem when she was told that Olivia has leukemia and her almost immediately reaction is "What's leukemia?" Seriously, she has no idea what it is other than it's deadly. I didn't expect her to know all of the details, but at 17 years old, at the very least she should know it's a type of cancer. Then after learning that it's cancer, she goes on this rant about the medical system and how cancer was cured but they prefer to give treatments that make the patients a different kind of sick while curing the cancer. Is she for real? I get that she was upset that her BFF is dying, and maybe said a few things that she didn't mean, but that did not seem like what was happening. Zoe is completely clueless.

There's also a bit of a focus on ballet in Maybe One Day. Zoe and Olivia had danced together their whole lives until recently. Olivia went on to teach a dance class at a rec center for underprivileged kids, but when she gets too sick, Zoe steps in for her. Zoe had cut ballet completely out her life, so she's a bit uncomfortable at first, but eventually settles into teaching these girls the basics. However, on more than one occasion, she has these interior monologues about how she can tell none of those girls would ever make it in a real dance academy, and that they're all horrible. She's totally missing the fact that those little girls are there to stay safe and out of trouble, and have something they enjoy doing for at least one day of the week. It may be their only opportunity to dance, rather than them trying to make it big. What in the world is her problem?!

Maybe One Day does have a bit of romance, but it's barely worth mentioning. However, the way it was presented did bother me. First of all, Calvin has zero personality since he doesn't get any page time. He goes from being an absolute asshole in Zoe's eyes to being the most amazing guy that she wants to be with. Their relationship only served as a way to make Zoe and Olivia fight, since Zoe lied about it to protect her dying friend's feelings. I did love that Olivia was upset because Zoe kept it from her out of pity rather than her wanting Calvin for herself. But Calvin was just a plot device that Zoe spent too much time obsessing over.

I wanted to like Maybe One Day more, but Zoe is just not a character I could bring myself to care about. This isn't really a bad book. There's a lot of good ideas here, but they're just ruined by a crappy main character. I also had a couple of concerns about how Olivia's treatment was presented in the beginning. I'm not sure, but I doubt anyone starts chemo minutes after getting their blood results. Shouldn't there be more discussions and paper work? Also, they kept referring to her chemo as "medicine" which made it sound very juvenile, but maybe that was for Zoe's benefit since she didn't know what leukemia was and chemo was probably too foreign a concept for her.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.