One day in December - Josie Silver

Description

Two people.

Ten chances.

One unforgettable love story.

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn't exist. After all, life isn't a scene from the movies, is it? But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there's a moment of pure magic...and then her bus drives away.

Laurie thinks she'll never see the boy from the bus again. But at their Christmas party a year later, her best friend Sarah introduces her to the new love of her life. Who is, of course, the boy from the bus.

Determined to let him go, Laurie gets on with her life. But what if fate has other plans?

Following Laurie, Sarah and Jack through ten years of love, heartbreak and friendship, One Day in December is a joyous, heart-warming and immensely moving love story that you'll want to escape into forever, for fans of Jojo Moyes, Lucy Diamond and Nicholas Sparks. 

Review

Laurie is sitting on a bus when she first sees a man who she decides is "the one" but the bus moves on, the guy doesn't get on the bus and that's it - except she can't stop thinking about him. For one year she tries to track him down without success, until she meets him again. Only this time he's now the boyfriend of her best friend and he's called Jack.

She doesn't let on that he is "the one" she has been raving about for a year to her best friend and so begins a journey 10 years of being Jack's friend.  With the story being told through both the eyes of Laurie and Jack so we get what's running through both of their thoughts as we progress through the story.

To begin with I felt this book was a little slow - I didn't connect with the characters and also couldn't see that Laurie and Jack were that connected either. I'm not a big one for romance per se - I do like there to be some sort of a back story and eventually that is what happened in the book. There was a story other than just Laurie and Jack and slowly I began to care about the characters in this book and felt a bond with them. Each new chapter brought changes in their lives and how the bond between Jack and Laurie evolved and grew with some very poignant scenes between them - still friends. 

I devoured this book over a couple of days because once it took hold of me I had to know what was going to happen to everyone.There were also some great supporting characters in her best friend Sarah, Oscar and the MIL aka HRH Lucille. Great writing that was so easy to read.

The end of the book has to be up there with some all time great love scenes - I did shed a few tears and it was a corker of an ending. This has got to be made into a film, I think I would watch it again and again and of course my impatience for the story to get going would be easily resolved!

I'm giving this book 5 out of 5 stars and my thanks to netgalley for an ARC to review.