Review: One Day by David Nicholls

About the Book

Emma Morley and Dexter Meyhew, meet properly for the first time on the 15th July 1988, the night of their graduation from University.

We meet them again, on the same day each year for the next twenty years.

Each chapter of the book, covers Emma and Dexter’s lives on that day, following their lives, loves and tribulations, and more importantly their enduring friendship.

You see, Emma and Dexter have one of those friendships, that is so strong and deep it is often to the detriment of others in their lives.

In fact, maybe the should just get together and be done with it?

My Thoughts

I only finished this book the other night, and have plenty of books I should be reviewing first, but well it was just too tempting to post a review on the day this book takes please each year. The 15th July.

Tony Parsons on the front cover, says that this is:

“A totally brilliant book.”

I agree whole-heartedly! The characters are wonderful, likeable (even when they’re slipping off the rails and you want to smack them upside the head!) and well formed, and the setting is just perfect, you can recognise each year perfectly. Anybody that has lived though the eighties, nineties and in to the noughties will find much to reminisce and laugh about (not to mention cringe!)

The twenty year romance (for despite what the two protagonists might believe, that is what it is) is perfectly handled, and thankfully it never descends into a melodramatic will they/won’t they see-saw dragged out over twenty years, the story is as much about their lives as it is about when/if they get together.

Now I can’t really talk about the next bit without spoilers, so feel feel to skip the next couple of paragraphs.

**Spoiler Alert**

Emma and Dexter’s friendship is one of the most satisfying things in the book, as a reader you know they have never got together is that they wouldn’t last two minutes if they did. Until the time is right that is. When they do get together it is for a heart-breakingly short period of time. Because only a few short years after their marriage, Emma unfortunately has a fatal accident.

Which is heartbreaking enough as it is, but what really tugs at the heart-strings and for me, makes the book. Is the final three years the book covers. Each of these follow Dexter as he struggles with the anniversary of his wife’s death, and is interposed with looking back at that first day they met, and how the friendship started.

I’m not ashamed to say, that I read these late few chapters with a huge lump in my throat.

**End Spoiler Alert**

One Day, is at times moving, funny and sad, and then you’ll turn the page and laugh your face off! Highly, Highly recommended.

[rating:5/5]

 

Book Trailer