[Review] The Rescue - Nicholas Sparks

Title of Book:  The Rescue
Author:  Nicholas Sparks
Publisher:  Grand Central Publishing

When confronted by raging fires or deadly accidents, volunteer fireman Taylor McAden feels compelled to take terrifying risks to save lives. But there is one leap of faith Taylor can't bring himself to make: he can't fall in love. For all his adult years, Taylor has sought out women who need to be rescued, women he leaves as soon as their crisis is over and the relationship starts to become truly intimate. When a raging storm hits his small Southern town, single mother Denise Holton’s car skids off the road. The young mom is with her four-year-old son Kyle, a boy with severe learning disabilities and for whom she has sacrificed everything. Taylor McAden finds her unconscious and bleeding, but does not find Kyle. When Denise wakes, the chilling truth becomes clear to both of them: Kyle is gone. During the search for Kyle, the connection between Taylor and Denise takes root. Taylor doesn't know that this rescue will be different from all the others, demanding far more than raw physical courage. It will lead him to the possibility of his own rescue from a life lived without love and will require him to open doors to his past that were slammed shut by pain. This rescue will dare him to live life to the fullest by daring to love.


                With this book, I decided not to read any reviews of it and just go with the flow. At the beginning of The Rescue, I met Denise Holton and her son. Her son apparently has trouble with language. I couldn’t imagine what Denise has been through with her son and no husband to support her. Denise then involved in a car crash and her son went missing. Some firemen and people from town came to help her find her son. The one who found her son is a volunteer firefighter named Taylor McAden. Like many other Sparks’ novels, we’ll see the love story between Taylor and Denise. This time, the obstacle is Taylor’s past.
                At first, I found it annoying the way Taylor clings to his past. Because it’s not only disturb his life but also people around him. It seems like his past is so bad that he couldn’t move on with his life. I mean, it happened a long long time ago. After I found out about his past (which described in the last part of the book), well okay I understand why he felt that way. He’s not being too dramatic and yeah I had to wait until the last few chapters to find out about this.
                Anyway, I’m not really impressed with Taylor-Denise relationship. What catches my attention more is Denise-Kyle relationship. Their mother-son relationship touches me, especially with Kyle’s condition. I was afraid that this book would disappoint me. I usually cry when reading Sparks’ books, but I didn’t when reading this book. At least until this sentence strucks me.
“For five long years she’d been deprived of something other parents take for granted, a simple declaration of love. ”
                This mother has waited so long to hear her son saying ‘I love you’. I cried because I’ve realized that after all this years I never say this to my mom. I never tell her that I love her. It’s sad to know that this boy, with his disability, trying so hard to tell his mom how much he loves her. It took five years for him to do that while twenty years seem not enough for me to do that. L
                The Rescue is enjoyable, eventhough the flow of the story annoys me a bit. It gives us so many questions along the way and the answers are provided to us at the end. So it takes patience to read this. I don’t usually read the author’s note, but I read this book’s author’s note. Apparently, this book is Sparks’ most personal novel because he’s inspired by one of his sons. What Kyle has is Central Auditory Processing Disorder, which Sparks’ son has too. It makes me sad knowing that there is a real person with this disorder. 


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