Allyson is the ultimate good girl, but toward the end of a surprisingly boring post-graduation tour of Europe, she makes an impulsive decision to skip the Royal Shakespeare Theatre's Hamlet for a street production of Twelfth Night featuring a striking Dutch actor. The next day, Allyson bumps into the handsome Dutchman, Willem, on a train ride to London, and they strike up a flirtatious banter in which he dubs her Lulu. After their two-hour trip, Willem offers to show "Lulu" around Paris "for JUST ONE DAY," and to her best friend's shock, she agrees. During their intimate day (and night) in Paris together, Allyson lets go of her inhibitions and enjoys taking risks, getting lost in the sights and sounds of a new place, and most of all, falling for this deep and enigmatic guy. But the next morning, Willem is inexplicably gone. Distraught and depressed, Allyson spends the entire following year coming to terms with how whirlwind romance changed the course of her life. Author Gayle Forman has already impressed readers with a moving novel about the difference a day makes, so it's no surprise she's taken the idea and inserted strangers instead of estranged exes as she did in Where She Went. Forman has created in Allyson's story not only the kind of intense 24-hour romance that quickens pulses but also a truly transformative coming-of-age tale that will inspire young women to take the Shakespearean line "to thine own self be true" to heart. By allowing Willem to rename her Lulu (he never learns her real name that night), Allyson starts off acting like a more adventurous spirit but slowly comes to realize she is capable of so much more than meeting her parents' straight-A, pre-med, Ivy League expectations.
The "Just One Day" part of the book provides that heady feeling of falling madly and deeply for Willem, who is both edgy and safe, worldly and idealistic, mysterious and open. Every "good girl" secretly wonders what it's like to surrender to the