The Best of Me by Nicolas Sparks

Overview

"Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She'd believed in it once, too, back when she was eighteen."

In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths.

Now, twenty-five years later, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back to Oriental for the funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave shelter to their high school romance. Neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever changed their lives. As Amanda and Dawson carry out the instructions Tuck left behind for them, they realize that everything they thought they knew -- about Tuck, about themselves, and about the dreams they held dear -- was not as it seemed. Forced to confront painful memories, the two former lovers will discover undeniable truths about the choices they have made. And in the course of a single, searing weekend, they will ask of the living, and the dead: Can love truly rewrite the past?

My thoughts:
I am loving being able to check out audio books for my Ipod from our public library.  It gives me a chance to listen on the go, when I am doing chores or running.  Lately I have been having a harder time fitting in sit down reading time, so audio books, which I have long listened to in the car, are helping me keep up with my usual reading pace.

Nicolas Sparks can be counted on to make you feel and also, at least for me, to shed some tears for his characters.  I now find myself wondering from the beginning what is going to go wrong and who is going to be hurt.  The decisions the characters have to make regarding their relationships are always tough ones, and never ones with clear cut answers, just as we often encounter in real lives.

Amanda and Dawson were high school sweethearts from opposite sides of the tracks.  They do not have the support of their families for their relationship but they believe in each other.  Then, to allow Amanda to have the life she has always dreamed of, Dawson steps back and this sets their whole lives into motion away from each other.  Through flashbacks and memories of the past and their old friend and mentor, Tuck, the complete history of the two is revealed as well as where they are in the present.  We want to believe in true love conquering all, but sometimes the way in which it conquers all is not how one would have imagined. 

Without Tuck's intervention through his dying wishes, I wonder if these two would have ever had the chance to come back to each other.  Tuck seemed like a gruff man, but through her visits Amanda has seen a romantic side of him and how he loved his wife his whole life even though she passed away years ago. 

While listening I was wondering about some tough questions.  How do we know how much we should intervene as a parent?  How can we make sure that our children can find happiness and be allowed to make mistakes that won't derail them completely?  How much can love conquer?

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9780446547659
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 10/11/2011
• Pages: 304