Maybe One Day: Escape with the most uplifting, romantic and heartwarming must-read book of the year!

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There's a . . . I mean, there has to be some mistake. How could you be getting medicine already?" Somehow that was the most implausible part of what she'd told me. I'd slept at her house Saturday night. She'd been fine. I'd talked to her this morning. Eight hours later she was in the hospital and getting medicine? How could they even diagnose what she had that fast? This book completely shattered me, I was a blubbering mess from early on and right the way through to the end. There were times I literally had to stop reading as I couldn’t see for crying. What a heartbreakingly wonderful book. Each new person Jess meets in her quest to find Joe left me with a smile and a tear in my eye. Maybe One Day is only the second "cancer book" I've read but, just like The Fault in Our Stars, it made me tear up. Only, unlike Green's renown novel, Kantor's latest is a little less humorous, a little less romantic, and has a little less to take away from it too. Where Maybe One Day excels is in its portrayal of friendship. Olivia and Zoe, two high school juniors, have been best friends since the age of four. Ever since they met in dance class, they've had the type of friendship most people only dream of or witness in the movies. Thus, when Olivia is diagnosed with leukemia, Zoe is devastated.

I'm feeling very torn about how to review this book. On the one hand, Debbie Johnson's writing is amazing and I literally couldn't put this book down and devoured it in two days including staying up way too late last night until I could barely keep my eyes open. On the other, it was heart wrenching and I currently prefer my books to be lighter even if they're dealing with serious subjects. It's a story full of hope, as we learn not only just what happened all those years ago that lead to Jess and Joe no longer being in each others lives, and we learn just what they have been up to in the years since. The storyline in this was really good. The whole thing flowed so nicely, and was just so real. The emotions and the way things happened just felt so realistic and believable. Holy broken heart batman! There are very few books out there that can make me have the ugly cry moment and this one has made the list. I cried three, yes, THREE, times reading this…IN PUBLIC! But seriously Maybe One Day may be one of the best friendship stories I have ever read and it was worth all the public humiliation.Where do I even start. I don’t cry when I read books – I just don’t. I may feel sad and all melancholy for a bit, but I can count on one hand how many books I’ve read where tears were involved. This is now one of them. If you go into this book expecting it to be a book about cancer, well it’s not…not really. At least it wasn’t for me. Instead, it’s about friendship, it’s about love, it’s about sisterhood and it’s about growing up and dealing with the shitty things that life sends your way. Cancer just happens to be one of those shitty things.

Maybe One Day was a poignant story it was full with endearing characters and beautiful relationships, but most of all a story full with hope. I know it’s really early on in the year for me to say this but I’m sure that Maybe One Day will remain one of my favourite reads of 2014. She never said anything until one night when she confessed her feelings. Now she’s afraid she’s ruined their friendship forever. We do have a potential romance with Calvin, which is kind of complicated because Olivia has a crush on him and Zoe doesn’t like him much at first. But I really liked him. Even when Zoe was difficult, he never stopped trying to be her friend. (Plus he was always there for Olivia’s brother. Nice guy.) I could have used more of him to lighten up the book and make his story arc a bit more complete. He felt glossed over, and his chemistry with Zoe was just too good to be ignored. (Even if it was a messy pairing; in the beginning, I thought she would hit it off with Olivia’s brother.)Source: I received a digital copy of this book for free on a read-to-review basis. Thanks to HarperCollins and Edelweiss.) On the day Jess says goodbye to her Mum at her funeral she doesn't realise that her life is about to change as she goes on an adventure with her cousin Michael to discover what really happened in the past. Joining Michael and Jess is a fabulous character called Belinda who as they navigate around Ireland and the UK they trace Joe and discover the life he had - that he had built up a future thinking that Jess didn't want him. I had no idea of the emotional journey this book was going to take on when I started, whilst there are some funny and light hearted moments, the issues dealt with in this book are deep, thoughtful and moving. I loved every moment of pain and anguish Jess did and experienced Joes as the story unfolded.