One Day In December by Josie Silver

One Day In December by Josie Silver

Read by Eleanor Tomlinson and Charlie Anson

10 hours

Published January 2018 by Broadway Books

Publisher's Summary: 

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.

My Thoughts: 

A coworker recommended this book to me when I told her what kind of books I felt like would work best for me back in December when I was so mentally distracted and in a reading slump. And then it took weeks to become available and somehow I let it expire before finishing it. I finally got it back last week and picked up right where I'd left off. That happens all too often to me and most of the time I find that I've lost my connection to the story and the characters. Not this time. 

If you've been following along with me for long, you'll know I don't read many romance novels (except, of course, for the classics!). But I was feeling the need for lighter stories that had happy, expected endings. Trust a romance novel to give you that. Sure the premises are often preposterous - I mean, you lock eyes at a bus stop and then spend a year searching for him because you're certain he's "the one." Ridiculous, right? But sometimes you just have to be willing to go with it because it's going to lead you to a story that rings true in so many other ways. 

One Day In December isn't just a romance novel; it's also a book about friendship, about the friendship between Laurie and Sarah that prevents Laurie from ruining Sarah's and Jack's relationship and about the friendship between Laurie and Jack that develops between two people whose goal is to make Sarah happy. I loved the friendship between Laurie and Sarah - the kind where special sandwiches are developed, where both understand the other like no one else ever will, the kind that can be bent but not broken. 

My coworker was right when she told me that this one has the depth that keeps it from being the kind of light and frothy romance novel that scares me away from the genre. I don't want to give away too much so I can't really even give you clues about what happens that gives you the bitterness to take the edge off of the sweet. You'll just to have to take my word for it that those things give these characters dimension and make them feel more like people you'd know. 

This book is the perfect example of why you should take a risk on books and try things you'd normally steer clear of - they might just be the right book at the right time.