one day.

I totally never did a book review for this book. Oops. Here it is, more than a month later.

One Day, by David Nicholls, was an enjoyable read. I had been wanting to check it out since I heard of the movie (now sitting in my Netflix queue). When I wandered into The Strand one day and saw it sitting on the table, I hesitated because I had heard both good and bad things about it. I decided to buy it on a whim. I'm glad I did.

The story starts on July 15, 1988 when college graduates Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew hook up for the first time. Each chapter brings us to the next July 15th, a year later. Over the course of twenty plus years, we see the struggles and achievements that Emma and Dexter experience individually but never without the other being somehow present. Their relationship is rocky and sporadic and they are rarely on the same page. One becomes famous while the other is stuck in a thankless job, one becomes a drug addict while the other publishes a novel, one gets married and has a child while the other struggles with a loveless relationship. They don't always like each other but at the very least, they are always in each other's thoughts.

I loved Nicholls' writing style. He is able to present the naturalness of human interaction and conversation as well as the internal struggle that humans can experience on a daily basis. He really develops not only the characters of Dexter and Emma but other characters that readers will come to know over time and who all play a role in Dexter and Emma's relationship with each other. The story is less of a happy one and more of a reminder that sometimes, life is just damn hard and unfair whether it is our own fault or the fault of uncontrollable forces.

Neither Dexter nor Emma are perfect but I fell in love with both of them and of course, wanted nothing more than for them to end up together. I won't reveal what happens in the final chapters but I will say that the way Nicholls ended the book was my favorite part about it. While I spent the whole book getting to know Emma and Dexter as they evolved, became older, and learned from their mistakes, the end of the book tossed me back and forth between the final years and that first year after college when their relationship was just beginning. Even though I already knew everything that happens after their first morning together, Nicholls' final moment, taking place back in 1988, is a fresh, nostalgic, bittersweet moment that left me satisfied and even a little teary-eyed.