Just One Day is about a young American girl, Allyson, who meets a Dutch actor, Willem, while on a once-in-a-lifetime tour of Europe after her high school graduation. She sees him perform in an underground performance of Twelfth Night in England and they happen to end up on the same train to London the night day. Allyson was upset to have missed out on seeing Paris, so when Willem offers to take her for just one day, she ditches her friend and takes off with him. They quickly fall in love during their day together, but when Ally wakes up the next morning, he has disappeared and she leaves Paris devastated. She starts her first year of college in a deep depression and completely withdrawn, but as she takes control of her own classes (instead of letting her parents micromanage her life), she decides to be independent and return to Paris to find out what happened to Willem.
Savannah and I decided to both read Just One Day by Gayle Forman and discuss it.We both really liked it, but we’re both safety conscious and thought it was absolutely insane that Ally took off for a foreign country with a guy that she had just met (the words “white slavery” were bandied about a bit in our discussion). We did like that she eventually shrugged off her depression and decided to stand up for herself, be independent, and get the truth from Willem. Unfortunately, we have to wait until the sequel comes out in the next couple of months to find out what happened to that rogue Willem (we’re sure that he has a good reason for disappearing)…