One Day is a light-hearted, slow-burn romance. I've personally never read a romance book before so I do recommend this as a starter since it's not over-done.
You truly grow to feel like the two main characters are friends of your own. The book is snapshots of their lives broken up into portions (early 20s, mid 20s, late 20s, so on). I honestly love the way it's structured as it feels like you're growing up alongside the characters. The further you read the more you realize you need to show more compassion for yourself - that despite mistakes everything will all work out in the end. It makes you feel less alone because even when the characters felt alone, we know they never truly were. As someone in my 20s it made me feel less lost because you grow to learn that at any age we're still learning and figuring things out. I enjoy how One Day provokes reflection and introspection: I found myself thinking about chapters of my life and wondering how little decisions affected me greatly, as they do with the characters. Overall it's a fun, comforting read that I'd say is like a coming-of-age story (because you never really stop coming of age, do you?).
The book is one of those stories with limited characters and settings that takes place over a short amount of time. I have a lot of respect for stories of that nature, but they're hard to pull off. I think if the story were written by someone else I'd have liked it more. There were too many unnecessary and unrelated references to sex and the writing style felt clunky. Stylistically I think I'd have enjoyed it more as a play (in an Arthur Miller way). I do want to say that I loved his vocab even if I didn't quite like his voice, it just feels reminiscent of 20th century writing. Overall the concept was good but needed to be executed better. I feel like if we got to the end of the hour, or even a scene with all the characters in one room, that would have really driven the story home. I'd say it was a page-turner but I wasn't really invested (but maybe I'm biased because the sex references were SO random it was just gross and offputting and my rating would've been a 3 otherwise). If I end up watching the Netflix movie I'll update my review and see if I like the story better as a movie.
Wilde's writing is beautiful and turns an offhand "if-only" into a story on the meaning of life and morality. The exposition is quite long as it takes half the book for the focus on the portrait to begin, and then chapter 11 definitely felt too long. If you're not fond of sociophilosophical conversation and introspective dialogue you might find the first half dry (maybe read the uncensored version instead since it's shorter? I am saying this prior to reading it though) but aside from that the second half suddenly becomes a page-turner. I recommend skipping Chapter 11 because it's far longer and more detailed than it needs to be. Overall though I enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray and have now ordered the uncensored version! It's definitely an insightful read into late nineteenth century England and - because this was my question prior to reading it - it's super gay as far as the 1800s go. Yay for historical gays :))
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