Just One Year

Just One Year by Gayle Forman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Just One Year is the companion novel to Gayle Forman's Just One Day. This book starts around the same time as the end of the "One Day" in Allyson's account of the story, where she wakes up in the art studio. Over the course of a year, the reader follows Willem as he tries to put together the events of his life, both before and after that day. As he traverses over places such as Mexico, India, France, Holland, and beyond, he begins to come to terms with the man he's grown to become and decide what he wants his life to be about.

Oh man. Ohmanohmanohman.

This is gonna have certain spoileres. You've been warned.

So. Willem de Ruiter. Dear God, I did not expect what I got from him. He was a lot sadder, a lot less mature than I expected. Which, of course, made his journey that much sweeter. This poor boy is so lost when he comes across Lulu, aka Allyson, that he was never going to recognize their time together as anything but what it was: different. It was different from any other girl he's been with, and for the very reason that, once Lulu is out of his life, he realizes that the life he's been living up until now is completely unfulfilling. Rather, it brings it into clarity so sharp that he can't go back.

Forman decided to be an incredibly diabolical author and have Willem end up much closer to finding Lulu than I expected we'd see. And by close, I mean at certain times, he was within a matter of HUNDREDS OF FEET FROM HER!!! Cancun ring a freaking bell? He also totally drops the ball when he has a chance to contact the only other person who's aware of what happened and why it would be a big deal for him to be finding her, but what does he do? GIVE UP. And, you know, address the naked lady in front of him in the way only a pessimistic lonely playboy can. *rolls eyes*

It was also very frustrating in that we do not see Allyson until we can see that the ending is VERY NIGH. Seriously, I was scared that it would end on the same cliffhanger as before, it was that close.

But I so loved seeing his transformation. We get to hear more about his family, and see how he resolves that part of his life. He begins to recognize that Lulu is not the answer to finding himself. She was the flashlight in the dark, but when the batteries die, you can still feel around and look for the door on your own. And he did, and in his own time. I also LOVED his acting escapade. Max was perfect, and, as an oft-confused lover of Shakespeare, I really enjoyed seeing how he could see the life in a play that may not read as richly to others, myself included.


The only thing I will say is that we get our resolution, but just that. There's no "and then what happened?" answered, and at first, I was a little disappointed. But two things occurred to me:
1: This was a companion novel. Not a sequel. Forman's last duet was sequential, and I also simply wanted this one to be a sequel, because I wanted to know what happened after the end of Just One Day. But this is Willem's half of the story, and the ending is not necessarily the important part of the story.

2: I realized that, like Allyson and Willem, I was mourning the loss of the One Day. It was perfect, and over too fast. Truth be told, I said in my review of Just One Day that the coverage of the day itself felt like a whole novel, and I was surprised by the end of it that there were more pages to be read.

But then I realized that the two of them start off in their slumps because they've idolized the One Day so much. Yes, they have such good reason to, and there's nothing wrong in remembering it, but because they put so much pressure on the day itself, and not what it revealed about the two of them, that they initially aren't able to grow, which needed to happen in order for them to find each other. So, yes, the One Day was spectacular. And unlike them, I have the privilege of revisiting it whenever I want (the power of a reader, mwahaha!). But the day must not be expected to envelop the whole story. It's the "but one day..." the springboard. It's instrumental, but not all-encompassing.

That being said, I was reading the ending of Just One Year over and over, savoring it. Because it was perfect. This entire novel, this entire series, was perfect.

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