A Perfect Day

by Richard Paul Evans

Hardcover, 2003

Collection

Description

Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. Romance. HTML:The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Broken Road series presents an inspiring story about a man who has to rediscover his priorities after finding money and fame.   Robert Harlan has three loves in life: his wife, his daughter, and his writing. But when his thirst for success causes him to lose focus on his family life, it takes a few more missteps??and finally, a stranger with a mysterious message about the brevity of his future??before he discovers the truth about himself: who he has become, what he has lost, and what it will take to find love again... ??A Perfect Day examines love, relationships and self-awareness...This well-written story spans the range of emotions from joy to sorrow and grief.???The Sunday Oklahoman… (more)

Rating

½ (94 ratings; 3.6)

User reviews

LibraryThing member loubigfish
An average guy working in advertising for years then something happens, He gets fired and his life changes as he finishes his novel after 4 years... He learns alot about himself and his life with the help of a mystery person. Tragic yet full of drama. very enjoyable.
LibraryThing member silenceiseverything
Okay, so A Perfect Day is so not the type of book that I usually read. It's a bit on the sappy, romantic side and that just doesn't appeal to me half the time. However, I have an intense love for Christmas movies and unbeknownst to me at the time, the movie was based on the book (I seriously
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groaned out loud when I started the DVD and it said "Based on the novel by Richard Paul Evans" as I like to read the book THEN watch the movie). Since I loved the movie and thought it was a sweet, yet angsty and heartwarming Christmas movie (that starred Paget Brewster whom I sorta adore due to how hilarious she is, so that had a big part in why I chose to watch the movie), I decided to read the book. And surprisingly, I liked it.

The premise of A Perfect Day is fairly simple. Robert, a happily married family man gets fired from his job. So, he decides to go back to his dream of writing and tries to finish his first novel. His novel is based on his wife, Allyson's, relationship with her father and what she had to go through while he dealt with cancer. Rob's book becomes a huge, best-selling hit, the fame starts going to his head, and he starts being a douche. Really, there's no other way to put it. He then finds out that he only has a few months to live and has to try to make everything right between him and his wife. (And before some of you get upset and say that I ruined the whole book, trust me, this is all in the inside flap of the book. I try not to be douche and give away spoilers myself because I hate it when people do that in a review I'm reading.)

Since I did see the movie first, I already knew most of the surprises in the book and oddly enough the movie was very close to the book. But still, I enjoyed A Perfect Day. It gave more of an insight into the Rob and Allyson relationship than the movie did and you could see more of Allyson's side in the book as opposed to the movie where she starts to become the nagging wife a bit too quickly (still I liked her). Again, I'm not a romance fan at all, but I really did like their relationship and found myself "awwing" in a few of the parts. However, it didn't make me cry, but I'm usually one of those that cries when something is terribly sad in a book, not when something is terribly happy and heartwarming. So, all in all, A Perfect Day was a pretty sweet and heartwarming book and while the movie was a bit more Christmas than the book, the book can still be classified as a holiday read if you want it to be, but you can still read it at any time of the year if you hate reading Christmas books at non-Christmas times. Also, check out the movie as it was also really great (plus, Rob Lowe and Paget Brewster, yay!) and while I don't think I'll re-read A Perfect Day, I will re-watch the movie countless times throughout the Christmas season.
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LibraryThing member jlcarroll
An easy read with an important reminder: don't take the most important things in life for granted. You don't get to keep them forever.
LibraryThing member carolvanbrocklin
Personally, I loved this book in that it showed how fame can totally warp a person's perspective on things.
A man writes a best selling novel based on his wife's experience with her dying father, when the book becomes a best-seller after being rejected by several publishers, he forgets everyone and
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everything but his book. Dumps his family, the publisher who believed in him....Typical human reactions that probably hit a little to close to home for some folks.
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LibraryThing member wareagle78
Yes, it's pretty predictable, and yes, the characters are a bit stale, but Richard Paul Evans still keeps me turning the page. This one follows the life of a man who becomes a best-selling novelist.
LibraryThing member JudithDCollins
I really enjoyed this book, as a short light read about a struggling author who finds fame and success and yet changes his personal life and is about to lose it all. Makes you think about those things which are precious and dear to your heart. Robert has a wonderful wife, daughter and gets fired
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from his job and unable to find a job, (feels as though he has to prove himself, based on his relationship with his father) and turns to his love of writing. After many rejections, he finally catches a break with much success; however, in the process he lets down his family, until a stranger appears with a mysterious message which changes his life.
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LibraryThing member jbarr5
A perfect day by Evans_ Richard Paul
Wanted to read this book because it sounded like a great book.
Starts out with the husband Robert losing his job in the sales department. He writes instead and loves the story and others have read it and love it.
Agents don't like it so he gets a manual job. Then
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one reads it and he is on his way to success on the large scale. She sends him away from home for 4 weeks as he does signings and tv shows.
His daughter Carson takes it hard that he's away that long and his wife although she talks to him, it's not the same as being with him. The story is about the time his wife spends with her father when they find out he's dying.
He kept lingering on, way past the expectations til Robert talked to him about how he loved his daughter.
He also has a hard time dealing with being away from home and the success.
Things get even harder and a man tells him something only he knows. From there he has choices to make, something that can ease the pain.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
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LibraryThing member nancynova
Out of work man writes a bestseller about his wife's father, which becomes a runaway best seller. He rides the wave of accolades, book tours and interviews, and almost loses his family along the way.
LibraryThing member berthashaver
Robert Harlan,an advertising salesman for a radio station loses his job and as an aspiring author, while off work, writes a book about his wife's last days with her father's dying days. When he is constantly on book tours, doing interviews with TV shows and magazine etitors, his new celebrity
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status is a cause for major marriage trouble.

He meets a "messenger", Michael in a Starbucs who leads him to believe he only has 40 days to live. In the following 40 days, he truly finds out what is important in life.

It was a great book, with a predictable, yet somehow unexpected ending.
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LibraryThing member SABC
When Robert is laid off from work, he beings to do what he has always wanted to do....write. Unfortunately, when he does, he forgets his family. He is swept into a new world far from home and family, until a stranger helps him rediscover what is really important.
LibraryThing member LyndaInOregon
If you like sappy, predictable stories with poorly developed characters and a by-the-numbers plotline, this might be the book for you.

In it, a wannabe novelist hits the big time after appropriating his wife's story of her last days with her dying father, and their supposedly perfect union begins to
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dissolve under the pressures of celebrity. He goes off on a four-week book tour (which probably ought to be banned by the Geneva Convention) and finds he enjoys the perks while she stays home in Utah with their 6-year-old daughter and feels sorry for herself because he's away,pushing his book up the Best Seller List.

At every opportunity, they undermine each other. He doesn't seem to have the backbone to tell his publisher that he absolutely has to have a mid-tour break; she never suggests the notion of meeting him somewhere along the route for a little together-time. (Example -- he finds himself in New York for Thanksgiving week because he has an absolutely vital Monday morning meeting, and notes with what Evans tells us is regret that he will miss his daughter's Thanksgiving Pageant on Tuesday. Why? Don't westbound planes depart New York several times a day? Then, first thing Monday morning, he discovers the meeting has been cancelled. Does he hie to the airport and grab the next flight for home? No, he hangs around until Wednesday afternoon bemoaning the fact that he's missing the family holiday.)

Evans never shows when he can tell, and his choppy chapter structure prevents the narrative flow from ever gathering strength. Then, about halfway through the narrative, the story takes a hard right into woo-woo land when Our Author meets an angel who tells him he will be dead by New Year's and of course, like Ebenezer Scrooge (but with less verbiage) he is transformed by the experience.

Nope. Just not my thing.
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Publication

Dutton Adult (2003), Edition: 1st, 288 pages

Pages

288

ISBN

0525947655 / 9780525947653

Language

Original language

English
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