In the romantic tradition of The Notebook and Nights in Rodanthe, #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Sparks returns with a story about a chance encounter that becomes a touchstone for two vastly different individuals—transcending decades, continents and the bittersweet workings of fate.
Publication Date: October 16, 2018
Publisher: Grand Central
Hope Anderson is at a crossroads. At 36, she's been dating her boyfriend, an orthopedic surgeon, for six years. With no wedding plans in sight, and her father recently diagnosed with ALS, she decides to use a week at her family's cottage in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, to ready the house for sale and mull over some difficult decisions about her future.
Tru Walls has never visited North Carolina, but is summoned to Sunset Beach by a letter from a man claiming to be his father. A safari guide, born and raised in Zimbabwe, Tru hopes to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his mother's early life and recapture memories lost with her death. When the two strangers cross paths, their connection is as electric as it is unfathomable . . . but in the immersive days that follow, their feelings for each other will give way to choices that pit family duty and personal happiness against each other in devastating ways.
Illuminating life's heartbreaking regrets and enduring hope, Every Breath explores the many facets of love that lay claim to our deepest loyalties—and asks the question, How long can a dream survive?
PURCHASE
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Praise for Every Breath:
"Sparks is known for crafting sweeping romances that make readers feel deeply and believe in the power of love...Sparks confirms his gifts...in this thoughtfully researched and spellbinding story of love that defies time, a tale both heartbreaking and heartwarming."―Booklist
Nicholas Sparks is one of the world’s most beloved storytellers. All of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, with over 105 million copies sold worldwide, in more than 50 languages, including over 75 million copies in the United States alone.
Sparks wrote one of his best-known stories, The Notebook, over a period of six months at age 28. It was published in 1996 and he followed with the novels Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999), The Rescue (2000), A Bend in the Road (2001), Nights in Rodanthe (2002), The Guardian (2003), The Wedding (2003), True Believer (2005) and its sequel, At First Sight (2005), Dear John (2006), The Choice (2007), The Lucky One (2008), The Last Song (2009), Safe Haven (2010), The Best of Me (2011), and The Longest Ride (2013) as well as the 2004 non-fiction memoir Three Weeks With My Brother, co-written with his brother Micah. His eighteenth novel, See Me, published on October 12, 2015. His newest book, Two by Two, will be published on October 4, 2016.
Film adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels, including The Choice, The Longest Ride, The Best of Me, Safe Haven (on all of which he served as a producer), The Lucky One, Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John and The Last Song, have had a cumulative worldwide gross of over three-quarters of a billion dollars.
In 2012, Sparks and his publishing agent and creative partner Theresa Park, launched Nicholas Sparks Productions, with Park as President of Production. A film version of The Guardian is currently in development, as is a film based on Football Hall of Famer Gale Sayers’s friendship with Chicago Bears teammate Brian Piccolo.
Sparks lives in North Carolina. He contributes to a variety of local and national charities, and is a major contributor to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame, where he provides scholarships, internships, and a fellowship annually. He co-founded The Epiphany School in New Bern, North Carolina in 2006. As a former full scholarship athlete (he still holds a track and field record at the University of Notre Dame) he also spent four years coaching track and field athletes at the local public high school. In 2009, the team he coached at New Bern High School set a World Junior Indoor Record in the 4 x400 meter, in New York. The record still stands.
Click to watch the Runner’s World video with Nicholas.
The
Nicholas Sparks Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to improving cultural and international understanding through global education experiences for students of all ages was launched in 2011. Between the foundation, and the personal gifts of the Sparks family, more than $15 million dollars have been distributed to deserving charities, scholarship programs, and projects. Because the Sparks family covers all operational expenses of the foundation, 100% of donations are devoted to programs.
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REVIEW
Every Breath by
Nicholas Sparks
My rating:
2 of 5 stars
Series: Standalone
Release date: October 16, 2018
Every Breath had a lot of promise to be a big winner for me, but unfortunately it didn't reach the expectations that I anticipated. Based on the synopsis, it sounded like an emotional ill-fated love story with the potential for a second chance later in life.
How long can a dream survive? it poses.
Mistakes were inevitable, and she’d concluded that regrets could impart important lessons in life, if one was willing to learn from them. And in that sense, she realized that her father had been only half-correct about memories. They weren’t, after all, only doorways to the past. She wanted to believe that they could also be doorways to a new and different kind of future.
I knew that a happy ending isn't guaranteed, and while that's preferable, if the message in the story at least leaves me introspective and moved then I'm satisfied. I didn't come away from the book feeling happy with the events that took place, in fact, I was frustrated and left wanting more. There were several things that contributed to that, and I'll get to that in a minute.
Tru Walls is a safari guide from Zimbabwe who is visiting North Carolina for the first time on a life changing trip. He's a man of simple needs who loves his son dearly, but as much as he loved his ex-wife, they couldn't make their marriage work. They wanted different things out of life: she wanted a husband who would be home more, he wanted to continue the career he loved amongst the land and wildlife where he felt most at peace. This is one area where he was unwilling to compromise, and they parted on amicable terms. There isn't much that would tempt him to leave the country and take time away from his son. Except learning more about his biological father and unlocking answers to questions he has about his mother. For that, he agrees to meet with the man who has reached out to him, and the uncertainty of what he will uncover has him more than a little unsettled.
Hope Anderson is staying nearby at her parents' cottage on the beach with her own worries consuming her. Her father has just been diagnosed with ALS, and with that earth shattering news, the future is a scary thing to imagine. Will her parents have enough money for his care as his health deteriorates? How will she deal with seeing her wonderful father slowly waste away before her eyes? And then she has things of a more personal nature plaguing her mind. The relationship with her boyfriend of six years is once again on rocky terms, and she's at a crossroads with him. Attending her friend's wedding by herself while he parties in Vegas with his friends, she knows something has to give. As much as she doesn't want to believe she's wasting her time with him, she can't help but feel like marriage and a family may never be in the cards. Motherhood has always been something she expected to achieve...but more than that,
needed to achieve. Now her biological clock is ticking away as she counts the minutes passing her by.
Both Hope and Tru were dealing with very heavy decisions that would forever alter the course of their life. It was a time for introspection and self-discovery. Then they cross paths and begin a friendship that very quickly evolves into a complication that neither was expecting. When I say very quickly, I'm talking about a matter of one day.
We met on a Wednesday morning, and I’d fallen in love with him by Thursday evening.
This was a major issue for me. Sparks was going for a soulmates/destiny/magical feeling about this couple based on how they instantly felt emotions that couldn't be explained. I'm not necessarily against that in books, but in this case it made their supposed depth of feelings seem artificial and shallow. In short, I just didn't believe it. The actual development of their romance was almost non-existent in the book. Which made the unchanged intensity of their feelings after 25 years to be laughable. On one hand, this was a fairy tale type of romance. On the other, it was bone jarringly realistic in regards to the effects of Hope's rash choices. I don't think you can have it both ways and end up with a cohesive plot.
Part two was a juxtaposition of regrets and hope for both characters. The big question was which one was the end point in it all? We get a
long examination of their life stories over the last two and a half decades. Family, successes, failures, and pondering if things could have been better if another path had been chosen. To be frank, I started to skim some of these pages after a while because the story started to lose me. If I had agreed with Hope and liked her more, I might have cared at this point. Unfortunately I got annoyed at her selfishness, and the ignorance of her decision. Yes, she achieved her ultimate goal, but at what cost? She had alternatives that would have given her the same results, but refused to compromise on her needs.
I was just so done with her, I completely disconnected from the outcome of the story. Yes, it was sweet and romantic how they reconnected, and yet I was puzzled as to why Tru would even be interested at that point in his life. It didn't make very much sense to me.
I enjoyed Tru's home of Zimbabwe, and the detail put into the research surrounding that setting. There were parts of the plot that were whimsical and touching, and yet overall the romance was too superficial to actually be believable. The ending left me unexpectedly deflated as the reality of the near future was revealed. I couldn't help but feel that Tru's blind devotion had cheated him out of the happiness he could have had. I'm sure a lot of readers will find this to be achingly bittersweet, but for me this leaned way too far into the bitter with not enough sweet to satisfy.
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