Just One Day discussion

Just One Day by Gayle Forman is a fiction book. I chose to read it because the last book I had read was by this author and I liked her writing. I think that the author typically writes fiction/ young adult books. This was a really good book that got progressively better throughout. I was very happy with it.
The book is about a girl named Alyson who goes on a teen tour to Europe as a present from her parents before college. She goes with her best friend, and when they are in England they meet a group of actors, one of which invites them to see a play they are performing. They end up going to the play and Alyson runs into the same guy who invited them to see the play the next morning on the train to London. They have a lot of chemistry but he is still a stranger and a little mysterious. She has one more day left in Europe before she has to go home, and he winds up offering to take her to see Paris all in one day because she says that she wished she could have gone.
They go to Paris together and Alyson begins acting in ways and doing things that she had never done before, and she feels freedom. She has a very strict and pristine life at home, so doing something like going to Paris with a stranger is exhilarating for her and brings out a side of her that she doesn't know, but she likes it. They have a great time together, but the next morning when she wakes up he is gone. Everything comes crashing down on her and she has immense feelings of sadness and betrayal. I think that was because she felt as if the fun part of her was taken away with the guy, because he brought it out of her
The book goes on to tell about Alyson's life in college, but she isn't having a good time, and is still thinking about the guy and wondering if he really left her or if something happened to him. This question is always on her mind so she isn't enjoying her new life. Eventually she meets someone who tries to help her track down the guy but he is untraceable.
The rest of the book tells about her journey to finding him and finding out answers. She ends up going back to Paris by herself to find him.
It was really cool seeing Alyson change into a stronger person over the course of the book. At first she was kind of annoying because she was letting something that happened in one day ruin her next few months, and I just wanted her to get over it. Her parents told her what to do and when to do it, and made her do things like choosing her major in college without asking her what she wanted to do, and she let them. She becomes a stronger person and stands up for herself and what she wants to do, and she tries becoming a friendlier and more social person over time. Seeing her go all the way to Europe and learn French and save up money to do it was nice because she was maturing and learning to fend for herself. The Alyson from the beginning of the book and the Alyson at the end are two completely different people.
The author's writing style is pretty easy to understand. It was fascinating to see how the author was able to put so much detail into the chapters that illustrated Alyson's traveling because she included French street names and vivid details about the the scenery. I wonder how she knows so much about European travel.
Overall I think that this was a really good book and I enjoyed reading it a lot. I would definitely recommend it. The beginning of the book is good but in my opinion it only keeps getting better throughout. I didn't expect it to turn out the way it did, I actually thought the book was only going to be about the experience in Europe, but it actually went to almost a year after the incident happened. Very good book!