One Day in December

This book gave me some anxiety.  I think part of it was I knew from the back that I was jumping into a ten year love saga that may not have a happy ending.  Part of it dredged up some unpleasant memories from my past.  Regardless, it took me a week to crack the cover, and then another week to read the first 120 pages.  But after breaking through that barrier, I finished the last 275 pages in two days.

Don’t let the “Christmas” sticker fool you in the library…this isn’t really a Christmas book.  It just happens that December marked the first time that Laurie and Jack meet, her on the bus while he was at the bus stop.  It was a movie-cliche love at first sight moment.  But the bus left, hauling Laurie away, embarking her on a year-long quest to find her missing “bus boy” with the help of her vivacious friend Sarah.  A year later, Sarah excitedly introduces Laurie to her new boyfriend…Jack, the mysterious bus boy.  This is where my anxious heart couldn’t take it because Laurie and Sarah are close.  BFFs.  Practically sisters.  But now Laurie has to decide whether to tell Sarah her new boyfriend is in fact the mystery man they’ve been looking for all year.  It’s stressful and tension filled and enough awkwardness to make anyone cringe.

But the story doesn’t end there.  It keeps going…for years!  Skipping every few months, it tells of Laurie and Sarah’s friendship, of Laurie and Jack’s infatuation turned friendship, of Laurie trying to mend her heart without uprooting friendships.  Heartbreak.  Loss.  Love.  Fallouts.  

This book reminded me of the 2014 movie Boyhood because it gives you snippets and pieces of Laurie and Jack’s lives without filling in all the tiny details.  Sometimes it will jump a month, sometimes six months.  Sometimes we’re in Laurie’s point of view, other times we go to Jack.  

I guess part of my reluctance once I started reading was the fact that I identified with Laurie.  Not in the love at first sight part (because if you’ve read any of my romance reviews, you know how I feel about that subject), but the effervescent best friend who always catches the eye of the guys part.  In high school, one of my best friends was that person.  She never stole the guys I liked, but it seemed that I was always the third wheel, the awkward side-kick without a date, the one who was not quite pretty enough.  I shrugged it off, like Laurie, but that nagging voice stays in your head longer than you’d like it to.  Laurie’s shock and pain at realizing her friend (even unknowingly) took the guy she’s been pining for brought back some of those high school feelings, so it was hard to get through the first part of the book.  But that same feeling is what pushed me towards the ending with abandon.  I needed to know that Laurie got her happy ending, just like me.

Overall, a slow start but a good read for any rom-com fans.