LibPicks : One Day in December
Hello Lovelies,
Welcome to the first instalment of “LibPicks” (aka. Library Picks) - a thread that I hope to post to every few weeks with a current book from my mini library that I am loving! Not only will this help keep me accountable to my personal goal of re-sparking my love of reading, BUT it is also a super fun way for you and I to get to know each other better, share our thoughts on what we have read, and make recommendations for new reads!
NOTE: I am going to start each LibPicks post with a brief summary of the book followed by my personal thoughts on the story/writing/characters, etc. I will try my best to not give away any spoilers in my personal thoughts BUT if I cannot help it then I will put a '“disclaimer” at the beginning of the My Thoughts section, so that you can decide if you would like to keep reading, despite spoilers.
Let us begin, shall we?
Summary
Genre: Fiction, Romance
Page Count: 416
Time to Read: (subjective to each individual) For me, it took a week reading about 60-80 pages/night give or take.
Topics: Romance, Friendship, Fate, Travel, Growing Up, Transitioning from University to Work, Finding your way.
One Day in December is a book about friendship, love and destiny. Main characters Laurie and Sarah are the best of friends, and then Jack joins the mix as Sarah’s new beau. The three of them have an unlikely and trying friendship but fate keeps them in each others lives. Over the years, relationships are tested as these three friends journey through their lives in search of happiness and true love.
My Thoughts…
Personally, I LOVED this book. Was it exceptionally cheesy? YES… BUT was it also exceptionally unique and well written? YES! On this thread you will start to see a pattern with the books that I like to read. I am not opposed to a little cheese in a book if it is well structured, characters are well developed, and the story has a special little something that keeps me hooked until the end.
One stylistic choice that the author made was to write certain chunks of text from Laurie’s perspective and the others from Jack’s perspective. Typically, I do not like books that are formatted in this way. I find that they jump around too much and skip over details. This was NOT the case for One Day in December, however. Where one character’s perspective ended, the next continued on from that point in time and flowed into one another seamlessly. It was a clever way to give the readers a look into the minds of both the male and female characters involved in the love “quadrangle” if you will, rather than just one perspective. It allows readers to get to know more about each character when you get a glimpse into their thoughts, not just their outward dialogue with other characters, and for me this is what set this book apart from others with similar formatting.
Another style choice that really worked for this book was the skipping ahead in time. Again…this would typically be very frustrating because you feel as though you are missing out on so much information, however, in this story it made complete sense to do this, and is one of the main things that kept me invested in the story. Sometimes she would skip ahead months, but rather than make me feel like I was missing out on information, I felt a sense of urgency to keep reading to find out what was going to happen next. In real life, every single day is not necessarily dramatic or exciting, and by skipping ahead in time to the “juicy” bits of the characters lives, it made the story more addicting, while making the characters lives seem more realistic.
Fave Quotes
“Do you ever wonder what might have happened if you’d just got on the bus?” - Laurie
OVERALL…
You MUST read it for yourself!
Super cute, fun and uplifting story that makes you believe in true friendship.
That is all for now, but comment down below if you have read this book and what you thought! If you haven’t read it, do you think you would give it a try?
Looking forward to learning more about your fave LibPicks!
Yours Happily,
Kristyn