One Day by David Nicholls
This is one of those love stories that I hate to read, yet I cannot put down till it's finished.
After spending their graduation night together, Emma and Dexter seems to be destined for each other, but life interfered, and they spend the next twenty years in the periphery of each other's existence, secretly longing for each other.
Dexter becomes a minor celebrity, and he lives the glamorous TV life. Emma, with a double-first degree, becomes a waitress, then a teacher, and oh, I so hate Dexter when he says "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." But I love Dexter when he writes to Emma, saying that she likes being mediocre, she likes to be an under-achiever, because then she can make a joke out of it, and not have to try so hard at being good in what she can do.
They get into relationships, they are hurt, they are successful, they laugh and cry and hate, and their thoughts always turn to each other, but they never seem to find each other.
Finally, when it seems it wouldn't become a love story after all, they do find each other. And it's beautiful, and like most love stories, it's sad.
Don't you just love it when you've got great friends (read: Jerry Colasito) who just route a book to you, trusting in their sound judgement that you'd read it and find it worth your time, and they turn out to be right?
Let me quote Jerry: It's sad, but life does not always have a happy ending. The good thing is, we can always find something good in a sad story.
