One Day

Janet Maslin

However widely One Day is imitated, it will be hard to match Mr. Nicholls's easy blend of bumbling insecurities (Emma's), overweening showbiz arrogance (Dexter's, when he becomes a television star), slow but sure pacing, humorous though seldom outright funny dialogue and authentically troubling coming-of-age issues. Other, similar writers (like Mr. Hornby in his recent Juliet, Naked) mine this same vein, but they tell more pensively complicated stories. Mr. Nicholls uses his adroit professionalism for something more handily miraculous: sweetening the journey from fiery, idealistic dreaminess into unforgiving middle age.
—The New York Times

Liesl Schillinger

Will Dex and Emma get together before it's too late? Will they ever act on the lone un-self-conscious thought Emma has been able to hold in her head since the day she walked away from Dexter, when she was 22 and he was 23, as his parents drove him home from college into his still unblemished future? "Love and be loved," she had told herself, "if you ever get the chance." It's something you may want to find out this summer at poolside. And if you do, you may want to take care where you lay this book down. You may not be the only one who wants in on the answers.
—The New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

The Hollywood-ready latest from Nicholls (The Understudy) makes a brief pit stop in book form before its inevitable film adaptation. (It's already in development.) The episodic story takes place during a single day each year for two decades in the lives of Dex and Em. Dexter, the louche public school boy, and Emma, the brainy Yorkshire lass, meet the day they graduate from university in 1988 and run circles around one another for the next 20 years. Dex becomes a TV presenter whose life of sex, booze, and drugs spins out of control, while Em dully slogs her way through awful jobs before becoming the author of young adult books. They each take other lovers and spouses, but they cannot really live without each other. Nicholls is a glib, clever writer, and while the formulaic feel and maudlin ending aren't ideal for a book, they'll play in the multiplex. (June)

Daily Mail

With a nod to When Harry Met Sally, this funny, emotionally engaging third novel from David Nicholls traces the unlikely relationship between Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew. . . . Told with toe-curlingly accurate insight and touching observation . . . If you left college sometime in the eighties with no clear idea of what was going to happen next, or who your lifelong friends might turn out to be, this one’s a definite for your holiday suitcase. If you didn’t, it still is . . . The feel good film must surely be just around the corner. I can’t wait.

Daily Mirror

[Nicholls] has both a very deft prose style and a great understanding of human emotion. His characterisation is utterly convincing . . . One Day is destined to be a modern classic.

The Guardian (London)

Just as Nicholls has made full use of his central concept, so he has drawn on all his comic and literary gifts to produce a novel that is not only roaringly funny but also memorable, moving and, in its own unassuming, unpretentious way, rather profound.

The Times (London)

A wonderful, wonderful book: wise, funny, perceptive, compassionate and often unbearably sad . . . the best British social novel since Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up!. . . . Nicholls’s witty prose has a transparency that brings Nick Hornby to mind: it melts as you read it so that you don’t notice all the hard work that it’s doing.

The Independent (London)

You’d be hard pressed to find a sharper, sweeter romantic comedy this year than the story of Dex and Em.

Heat

We may have found the novel of the year—a brilliantly funny and moving will-they, won’t-they romance tracing a relationship on the same day each day for two decades.

Esquire

As a study of what we once were and what we can become, it’s masterfully realised.

Sunday Herald

A delicious love story.

Library Journal

Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew get together (almost) following their graduation in 1988. We catch up with them annually on July 15, St. Swithin's Day, the British equivalent of Groundhog Day but with rain. Here, it's a prognosticator of how their lives are turning out. She's been in love with Dex for years, while he's been in bed with more women than we can count. He gets a job in "media" as a late-night TV presenter on music/rock star interview shows. She works at a crappy Mexican restaurant before altering course and becoming a teacher. Do they eventually find their way back to each other? Nicholls (The Understudy) doesn't take the easy route, throwing lots of relationships and obstacles in our protagonists' paths. VERDICT This tale of youthful dreams coming true and perhaps not being so dreamy is written with great verve and charm, reminiscent of the works of Mike Gayle. A coming-of-age story for all of us who might still be wondering what we want to be when we grow up. [Reading group guide.]—Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal