Review: The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

Goodreads rating: 3.93/5

My rating: 4.9/5

"The Best of Me" by Nicholas Sparks is the love story of Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole, two individuals of opposite ends of the social hierarchy. The Coles are known to be criminals while the Colliers are one of the wealthy and respected families. When it's time for Amanda to move for university, she's given an ultimatum by her parents in their effort to separate her from Dawson, at which they succeed. Years later, Dawson and Amanda are reunited at their home town when their mentor has passed away and are tempted to rewrite their past.

This book surprised me, when I started reading it, I did not even think of the possibility of it ending the way it did. The story begins quite slow and I found myself bored at times but it eventually turned out to be worth the read.

Nicholas Sparks has a way of sprinkling his readers with all the sparkles of love as each page of his books are turned. He makes you fall in love with the idea of love and makes you believe in true love. I'm a sucker for love so I easily enjoy his stories. One thing I noticed about most of his books is that his writing style is old fashioned, with characters writing letters and having conversations to develop relationships. In reality, with technology in the rise in this age and time, that doesn't really happen anymore. Sparks' world is a heart warming reality to imagine. Another thing he almost always has in his stories are life altering tragic events. In the case of this book, the event he created was super unexpected. Close to the end of the book, I had realized where it was going, making my heart pound so hard and fast, I kept rejecting the idea of it ending the way it seemed it would. I kept thinking, "No, no, no, please no". I think I've already given away too much about whether or not there is a happy ending. What surprised me even more was the fact that I cried at the end of the book. I already sensed how it would end and yet I was not mentally prepared for it to actually end that way. I kept imagining alternate endings and asking Sparks in my mind, "why not this way?", even if I knew that it wouldn't have been as good or wouldn't have the impact that it did if it didn't end his way.

This book pulled at my heart strings, I legit needed a break to take a breath and remember that it was not a true story - that Dawson and Amanda didn't really exist.

Dawson literally gives the best of himself to Amanda in this story, please read the story to find out how. I promise, you wont regret it. And oh, I mean "literally" the way it actually means, not the way people just throw the word around these days. This is completely unrelated but I once overheard someone say that their week was "literally full of shit". I think only people who know what the word 'literally' actually means will understand how wrong that sounded.

Anyhow, I hope I didn't ruin the review for you. If ever you read this book, I hope you love it as much as I did.

I will leave you with one of my favourite parts of the book:

I just love how Nicholas Sparks came up with an analogy and created a story around it. :)