One Day - David Nicholls

On 15^th July 1998, Emma and Dexter spend a night together after their graduation, but when the morning arrives the two will be their separate ways. But how will different will their lives be in a year? Or five years? Or ten years? Following Emma and Dexter through their lives for the next 20 years will highlight how much can really change in a year. Filled with wit, and charisma, One Day is a story that will stay with the reader long after its conclusion.

The concept of One Day is refreshing in romance literature, rather than building the romance in a conventional space of time Nicholls writes about Emma and Dexter on the same day every year, but still implementing important events that have happened in the meantime to further shape Emma and Dexter’s characters. Emma is a working-class woman from Yorkshire who has to work her way to the top, whereas Dexter is middle-class and has everything handed to him. This dichotomy is often a point of friction between Emma and Dexter, but Nicholls also highlights that these characters are flawed in ways more than one to further flesh out who they are as people.

However, this made Dexter’s character highly unlikeable, though both are flawed, Dexter is portrayed as a self-conceited, selfish man. The 20 years shows how this is his downfall, but after turning up drunk and sleeping most of the day away when visiting his mum who was receiving chemotherapy he became unredeemable to me. It took so many bad things to happen to Dex’s character before he could treat Emma right that their romance felt as though it was born out of the comfort of knowing rather than a genuine connection between the two characters.

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