ONE DAY IN DECEMBER
(Standalone)
Josie Silver
BLURB
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick
“Get ready to be swept up in a whirlwind romance. It absolutely charmed me.” —Reese Witherspoon
Two people. Ten chances. One unforgettable love story.
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.
★★★★
One Day in December is a story that takes place over 10 years. It starts with Laurie heading home on a bus for Christmas when she looks out the window and notices a guy (Jack) reading a book. Jack looks up from his book and locks eyes with Laurie. Both are so mesmerized by each other that neither makes a move until it’s too late and the bus is leaving with Laurie still inside and Jack stuck outside.
”Sometimes you just meet the right person at the wrong time.”
Laurie searches high and low for Jack. She even tells her roommate, Sarah, about him. They both search for ‘bus boy’. All that goes well until Sarah brings home her new boyfriend and it turns out he’s bus boy. Neither Laurie or Jack let on that they know each other.
“I know where the line is and I’ll never cross it but it’s just sometimes the line feels like it’s been drawn with chalk on the grass . . .”
Heartache and pain ensue for Laurie as she watches her best friend and her love-at-first-sight date over the years. While the story contains everything from a marriage to a baby to a life-changing accident there is a lot that happens that fills in the pages of this book.
I’m not an aficionado of love triangles (even ones without cheating) but I did find this one to hold my attention.
ONE DAY IN DECEMBER is a standalone. It’s was a terrific debut novel. I will definitely be checking out her next novel that comes out later this year: “The Two Lives of Lydia Bird. It’s about a bereaved woman who miraculously gets the chance to live two lives – one where her husband is alive again, the other where she’s starting to fall in love with someone new.”
