The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publish Date: October 11, 2011
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0446547659

Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole were teenage sweethearts in 1984 small town North Carolina; from opposite sides of the tracks, their intense and beautiful romance didn't really stand a chance.  The Cole families are a bunch of hard drinking, woman beating, law breaking, and drug dealing bad boys, where as Amanda’s family are church going stand up citizens.   Despite the odds, or maybe because they manage to find each other and fall in love, they spend a considerable time at old man Tuck’s garage where Dawson works.

Now middle-aged, they've taken wildly different paths, but neither has lived the life they imagined.  When their old Friend and mentor Tuck dies, the pair are reunited in their hometown for the funeral.  The grumpy yet crafty old man as left specific instructions as to how his final wishes are to be carried out, including a trip to him cabin as well as some personal letters.  As expected the years apart haven’t hindered what Dawson and Amanda fell for each other despite that Amanda now has a husband and children.

My Thoughts
Dawson is another quiet, somewhat tortured hero of Sparks’ who you can’t help but fall for.  He works on the oil rigs, has spent time in prison and has spent almost his entire life running from is ghastly family and their reputation and has never gotten over his one true love Amanda.

It is a well-paced, touching love story, sometimes clichéd but not obvious or wearisome, but is mature and realistic.  There are actually quite a few characters involved here and Sparks has again written this using multiple points of view which as the suspense factor increases get shorter and shorter, so towards the end you’re only getting about a paragraph from each character, increasing the tension level while he wove all the storylines together and leaves the reader guessing the outcome.  In all, Nicholas Sparks still never really fails to show the main aspects in his novels.  There are still the flashbacks, the memories, the tragedy and the everlasting love.

My Rating: ««««

Buy it Now!

The reviews made here are my personal opinion. I’m not being paid to review any of these books. I am by no means a professional book reviewer or editor.  I do this for the love of books.