Review & Giveaway: One Day in December by Josie Silver

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 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?

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I had already bought the eBook of One Day in December when I was contacted to be part of the blog tour back in September but I wasn't in a position to read and review the book at that point so I hosted a guest post from Josie Silver which you can read here. And it's only been now in my festive hibernation that I finally found the time to curl up with this beautiful story.

One Day in December is one of those books that will frustrate and please you in equal measure as we follow the tortured tale of forbidden love for Laurie and Jack, you'll be wanting to scream and shout at them to admit their feelings for one another but yet at the same time you don't want them hurting others around them.  Told over a period of a number of years, December 2008 to December 2017, we follow the story of their first 'Meet Cute' sighting of one another whilst one was at a bus stop and the other was on a bus, to their eventual meeting in person a year later. But by then life has already thrown the first curveball as Laurie is introduced to her flatmate Sarah's new boyfriend Jack who just happens to be the 'bus boy' from a year ago!

What follows is a narrative of events told from the viewpoints of both Laurie and Jack, so we get to see how both of them feel and react to the circumstances they find themselves in, as they make a a subconscious decision to never admit the truth to Sarah by pushing their feelings aside and build a platonic friendship.  A friendship which over the years sees them share many experiences together... some good, others not so happy occasions.

This book is so much more than just a girl meets boy love story, or even a straight forward love triangle seeing as Laurie and Jack are resisting temptation for one another.  It's very much a character driven story showing the twists and turns of where life takes them, the good, the bad and everything inbetween. I liked the fact that all three characters, and I'm including Sarah in this, had their flaws and that they weren't perfect which made the story all the more relatable for it.

One Day in December was one of the last books I read in 2018 and it's certainly made it's way into being one of my favourite books of the year.  I loved it for its brutal honesty as to how life isn't always rosy but that's not to say the ending didn't make even this cold-hearted woman go a little bit gooey when I'd finished reading.

Thanks to the lovely Georgia at Penguin Books, I have a paperback copy of One Day in December to give away.

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