In a year that feels like it’s been one disappointment after another, I’m grateful for the book One Day. It’s a simple book with a simple enough premise in that it follows two people, Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley, on the same day over the course of twenty years, beginning with when they’re fresh out of college. Over the next two decades, they will have tremendous highs, lows, and heartbreak, but throughout it all, they’ll never stop thinking of each other. It’s not like we haven’t seen this story before, the one with the working class girl and the rich boy, whose star falls as hers rises, and above all, two people who are clearly meant for each other. But author David Nicholls is just so damn compassionate and insightful that you feel like you’re seeing Em And Dex for the first time, along with all the compromises and struggles as their lives end up very different from how they’d imagined. Any time I want to feel soothed, or inspired, or hopeful, or really anything positive, I just pick up this book and turn to a random page, where I’m sure to encounter something touching, insightful, or humorous, as Nicholls seems to know exactly what it’s like to be any age. And I’m thankful that I don’t feel the need to hate-watch the godawful, spectacularly miscast movie adaptation. – Andrea Thompson
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