After reading the story of hard-hearted mafia dons in Dongri to Dubai by Hussain Zaidi, I find love and romance missing from my life. So was looking for some romantic novel. I was tempted to read A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks once again. But then settled for The Best of Me also by Nicholas Sparks. The movie adaptation of the novel will release by October 2014.
The title of the novel The Best of Me was a little confusing. I read half of the story still couldn’t find the title relevance to the story. It is only in the climax significance of the title could be fully understood. To mean it meant that you are giving your best thing to your lover.
The story starts with the bang promising selfless and unconditional love and romance. There is a melancholy in the love story of the lead characters Dawson and Amanda which will touch your heart. So far so good. But suddenly author start introducing many new characters and their stories which seems to be irrelevant to the main story.
But actually all those unnecessary characters actually played a vital role in completely changing the climax of the story which was otherwise swinging between Amanda’s dilemma to finish her unhappy marriage and settle once again with her childhood love or to save her marriage with Frank.
For me the best part of the novel was its beginning and end but in order to understand the how things happened in the end, why Amanda never went back to Dawson. we have to read the middle part of the novel as well.
Sparks has also added some spiritual and ghostly characters in the book as well. Dawson see a hairy man who saves his life twice but actually that man turns out to be someone else. Tuck, a mutual friend of Dawson and Amanda feels and hears his deceased wife Clara. Tuck and Clara love story in the book is also very interesting to read.
Tuck is himself a dead man in the story but he meticulously plans the meeting of Amanda and Dawson before dying. He firmly believes both are incomplete without each other and will find solace in one another. But destiny has other plans for both which cannot be altered.
Verdict: Overall it is a decent one time read.
More Books by Nicholas Spark
