The part of this book that struck me the the most was it's inspiration. Being an avid reader of Thomas Hardy, and counting Tess of the D'urbervilles as one of my favourite books, it was a lovely surprise to see that David Nicholls was able to write such an amazing story based on a very morbid paragraph from Hardy's Tess. The premise of One Day did not hit me until I read this paragragh as an intro to one of it's last chapters, and it made me love it even more. I can't say that I really felt for either of the characters particularly, but I did enjoy the attention given to the settings in the story, most of which I had been to and could immerse myself in. Nicholl's may again have been inspired by Hardy's attention to nature. I have to finally add to this review that I cried for about 4 hours straight at the end of this book, I was so emotionally shattered I didnt know what to do with myself. Any book with the power to break your heart this badly at the end is definitely worth a read.