At some point, I realised that I just didn’t care what happened to Emma and Dexter.

The characters became flat and the storyline uninteresting. I started to lose interest towards the end of the book. Although I am younger than Emma and Dexter, most of the pop culture references were still very familiar to me, which was a nice bonus. The dialogue was spot on and the characters ideas and attitudes gradually changed as they entered their thirties and neared their forties. At times it had me laughing out loud, and I was pleasantly surprised with the realistic aging of the characters. Their characters are too extreme and if they met each other in real life, I doubt they would really be friends.īut, when you ignore these minor details, One Day is a really good, relaxing read.

They have an odd relationship, and at times I found it rather unbelievable. Dexter half-heartedly attempts to do this but is too interested in himself to put much energy into sorting his friend out.Įm and Dex. While Emma slogs away in a job she hates, her confidence sinking, Dexter is off gallivanting across the world, racing through girlfriends and not giving a moments thought to the rest of his life.Īs a twenty-something myself, I have had moments of self doubt and working in jobs I hate, so can understand Emma’s position, but all I wanted to do was give her a good slap and tell her to stop moping around. She is an intelligent, idealistic young woman, bursting with ideas, but struggles to find any meaning in her life. The first few years after university for Emma have none of the excitement that she had envisaged. It sounds a bit depressing, and parts of the book are Depressing and realistic. Little do they know that their lives will not go as planned and the age of forty, which seems so far away and unimaginable now, will come along much quicker than they would like. It stretches before them, filled with hopes, dreams and endless possibilities. As they lie in bed, smelling of cigarettes and alcohol, they talk of the future. It’s June 15th 1988, the day after Emma and Dexter’s graduation. This is the third book that I have read for the Pay it Sideways Challenge. I have to admit, I had been avoiding this book until I read this review at Lit Addicted Brit. At first, I was unsure whether the concept would work, but it does – at least for the first half of the book. What a brilliant idea for a book! One Day dips in and out of the lives of two people on the same day every year over the period of twenty years.

One day david nicholls book