Just One Year is Gayle Forman's follow up to Just One Day. It picks up his story after he leaves Lulu - or Allyson - after their lifechanging day together. Finally we get to find out what happened to him, where he went, whether he really just did a runner because he's an arse (but did we ever really think he was?). This book follows him over the year until his (let's face it) inevitable reunion with Allyson and tracks a jaunt through Mexico, to a reunion in India with his mother, and back to Holland - his home - again to face his past. 
 I mentioned previously how I loved If I Stay and Where She Went, and the raw emotion each book conjured in me. Hours of crying, and just feeling it all right there in my chest. Even though I know not all books by the same author are going to live up to that, I still expected to feel something more than nothing. But I've just closed Just One Year (which having read Just One Day I knew how it was going to end, more or less) and my reaction is just a bit like 'meh'. I don't feel any joy, hope, sadness; no pangs or stirrings of love, loneliness or anything else. I read the last sentence and was already looking for the next book. 
 It really sucks when you realise an author you loved before has delivered something you can't get excited about as you read. I put it down for two days and barely even thought about it. So why and how did this happen? What was it about this one that didn't sit right with me? I think it's because, after reading and in the end enjoying Just One Day, I considered Allyson and Willem's story to be done with - even with the looming question of what had happened to him that day. I know that at the end of Just One Day, you could consider their story to be just beginning, blah blah blah but bookwise I thought it was pretty much over. I liked what I thought was the ending, then it changed up a bit, and I accepted that new ending. I knew there was another book, but to me Just One Day could have been a standalone. Even though we got a new insight into Willem, it didn't feel like any new ground was being covered. I'm normally good with slow moving books as long as I get something else out of it - a deep plot, a greater understanding - but this one just didn't do it for me as I watched Willem's lacklustre search through Mexico for Lulu and through India for a relationship with his mother that he'd never had. 
 The one great thing about this book was the travelling. Forman has provided us, yet again, with beautiful descriptions of places I've never been but can picture vividly in my mind's eye and I can feel my wanderlust rearing up again. Mexico, Cancun, India, Amsterdam - so many places to choose from! And Willem just lazily hops around the world the way we all wish we could. Funny how money never seems to be a problem for him (Brit, stop hating on rich people. It's not their fault!). He also rarely seems to enjoy what he's doing, just wandering around like a lost puppy, but then again maybe that's the point. He's got the life and yet he's unhappy. 
 I found it hard to sympathise with Willem and lacked interest in his story until he got back to Amsterdam and Shakespeare. As we got closer to the end, I was a bit eager to see how the stories matched up but it seemed to me he was just a bit over keen to find exactly what his parents had with a dream girl who it may not even work out with. It's all a bit romantic and though I have a soft spot, I guess I'm a bit more pragmatic than that so it didn't strike a chord with me. 
 I just couldn't feel it but I still love Gayle Forman's writing. 3 stars.