Just One Day by Gayle Forman

Just One Day by Gayle Forman
Series: Just One Day, #1
Source: Bought
Publisher: Speak
Publication Date: April 20, 2013

Allyson Healey's life is exactly like her suitcase—packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything she’s not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform Allyson’s life.

A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the "accidents" of fate, Just One Day shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost. . . and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know.

I'm not sure if it's these things or something else, but it makes that kiss, which I get was just platonic - a friendly, cheek handshake thing - feel momentous. A kiss from all of Paris.
Just One Day was a new kind of read for me. While I thought I would like it more than it did, that doesn't mean that it didn't hit me in a good way. From reading the synopsis, I thought it would be more like Anna and the French Kiss. I freely admit that. And while it was little to nothing like it, I still enjoyed it for what it was: a good read.

I liked the adventure of going to Paris for just one day - I love all books with travel, so it wasn't a stretch that I would like a trek across Europe. It all felt very romantic, even though I did question Willem's motives a couple of times. It wasn't hard, with Allyson/Lulu being kind of scared of his motives as well.

In fact, Allyson herself wasn't so bad. I actually ended up liking her more than I thought I would. At first, she comes off as a little uptight, but as you get to know her you realize that she's actually a sweet girl. She's just a little bit too safe, a bit scared. She was unsure.

Which is why Willem really balanced her out - if anything, he was overly sure of himself. He was also very compulsive, and honestly just a little bit crazy. In a good way, of course. I think it takes a strong person to travel around a country by themselves.

There's also something romantic about that, but let's not go there. I guess I just find travel of any kind romantic. The story itself was romantic, but I also feel like it was very nostalgic - and I was slightly disappointed when Allyson came back from Paris in pieces. She went through a bit of depression, and it was sad. I also didn't really care for the ending - it was depressing too. I've ordered Just One Year, to see if we can get a happy ending - but I'm not going to lie.

The end of this one just really made me want to cry. Even for days after, when I glanced at the book - all I wanted to do was cry. All in all, Just One Day was a good read. Depressing and romantic - but you've really got to be in a mood to enjoy that, don't you think?

Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira
Series: N/A
Source: Netgalley
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: April 1, 2014

It begins as an assignment for English class: Write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because her sister, May, loved him. And he died young, just like May did. Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to people like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Amelia Earhart, Heath Ledger, and more; though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. She writes about starting high school, navigating new friendships, falling in love for the first time, learning to live with her splintering family. And, finally, about the abuse she suffered while May was supposed to be looking out for her. Only then, once Laurel has written down the truth about what happened to herself, can she truly begin to accept what happened to May. And only when Laurel has begun to see her sister as the person she was; lovely and amazing and deeply flawed; can she begin to discover her own path.

I know I wrote letters to people with no address on this earth, I know that you are dead. But I hear you. I hear all of you. We were here. Our lives matter.
I really have no idea what to say about Love Letters to the Dead. It was amazing, that's for sure. It touched me - I guess that's just one way to put it.

I loved the letter format that it was written in. It was kind of magical - the idea of writing letter after letter to dead people is great to me - I always kind of wondered if they could hear/see us, you know? The letters were very conversational, but they still had a distinct "this-is-a-letter" feel to them. It was all very surreal.

The entire book had a very depressed lilt to it - a kind of feeling that something very bad had happened. I liked that. I liked it a lot! I also liked that Laurel gave us a bit of background information on everyone that she wrote to - by just kind of slipping it in there, by saying that she understood why they did something. That was great. I didn't know some of the people that Laurel wrote to, but the ones that I knew far outnumbered the ones that I didn't. Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin and Heath Ledger were just a few of the best ones. It was cool, some of the things that she wrote to the people that she thought would understand.

Let's get to the best part, though. Laurel. She was an amazing, true to life, fleshed out character. She's depressed and it's obvious, she's innocent and naive, but she's also self-conscious and sort of funny. She is who she is, and even if she's not exactly comfortable with herself - she was a real person. I loved that about her.

She dealt with grief in such a real and unique way, and even though she sometimes made bad decisions, I found that her growth throughout Love Letters to the Dead was absolutely fantastic.

I enjoyed the happy moments in this book. They're few and far between, but they're there none the less, and they make the book just a little bit lighter. Love Letters to the Dead really handles a lot of subjects, from depression to molestation to drug use, and I think that it handled them all well.

The writing was beautiful. I don't think that the prose could have been any better. All in all, Love Letters to the Dead really is a good book. I'd recommend it to people who like issue books.