Read: 6th March 2024 – 19th March 2024
Rating: 4/5 stars
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I’m obligated to preface this review by saying spoilers ahead – I have never been so angry at a book which I loved so much. Genuinely, the last forty or so pages knocked a full star off its rating. One Day is a beautiful book, a book that captures the tribulations of growing up as an adult with a keen emotional intelligence and realism that I found so refreshing to read. Emma and Dexter are about as polar opposite as two human beings can get, and that’s why they have such an innate understanding of each other. Of course, this is a romance, but you never feel like there is something artificial or forced about their connection. The natural chemistry between them is palpable, the strength of their friendship solid despite the storms that sometimes shake its foundations. In all honesty, it was such a joy to read about them, such a joy to watch them navigate life apart and together, making mistakes, messing up, just being two normal people with their luggage and their pasts, their hopes and dreams, an understanding as natural as breathing between them. Nicholls’ prose is just the right fit for this novel – doesn’t take itself too seriously, and is very funny in places while at the same time never feeling lightweight or silly. Whoever the narrator is, you feel like you’re in the character’s head, listening directly to their voice, and it’s such enjoyable reading.
So. Why the full star being removed? I think I just felt cheated, to be honest. I’m sure at the time Emma’s death felt like a breath of fresh air, a shocking narrative conceit meant to make the reader sit up and gasp (which I did). Perhaps I’m just too used to gays being buried to find any appeal in this, perhaps I just feel like I’ve seen this so many other times or so in the decade and a half since One Day came out, but it just felt like robbing the reader. Emma and Dexter finally have their happy ending – and to be honest, I didn’t think they would get there, I thought the book would end with their relationship not being able to survive the fires of romance and the lesson would be that sometimes, things just don’t work out, even when you want them to. Emma dying in an accident, a parable on the fragility of life though it may be (carpe diem, I’m sure), just steals that growth away from her and Dexter. I suppose that’s what death is like, and God forbid I ever lose a loved one in a way like that, but it just left me feeling so bereft. I don’t dispute at all that Nicholls must be a good storyteller to make me feel like that, but still. My reading, my rating.
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Originally posted on Goodreads on 27th April 2024: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6321077934