[Review] The Best of Me - Nicholas Sparks

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

"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?

Just like what is written at the back of the book, The Best of Me is about two high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole who were lovers and now already grown up and go their own ways. They separated because Amanda’s family never gives a chance to Dawson. The Coles is famous as a criminal family and Amanda is constantly forced to leave him and continue her life.

Amanda and Cole are some of the reasons why I read romance book. Even though they don’t end up as what I want, but hey! You can’t always get what you want. Amanda and Dawson are just … oh, my, God. Dawson is amazing. He has his flaws, and also with the fact that he’s a Cole, but when he’s with Amanda, I completely understand why Sparks chose this title. Amanda brings out the best of Dawson. I know that might sound cliché or cheesy. But that’s what happened between them.

Since the story mostly tells about their condition now, we could only learn about their high school love through flashback. Yet, the chemistry between them feels natural. I enjoy reading their conversations, jokes, and even the arguments.

I think that there’s a little too much going on in this book, with Amanda’s husband drinking problem, Dawson’s accident when he’s young, Dawson’s family, and Tuck’s story about his late wife. Even though in the end they come up together and complete the puzzle, at some point I felt that I lost the connection with the book. I felt like I read different book. Maybe it was just me hoping that it would only be about Amanda and Cole. 

Overall I like this book. The Best of Me still has the combination of drama, southern small town, and people dying (it’s true) just like another Sparks’s books. Sometimes those combinations don’t really work out for me. However, this book doesn’t disappoint me.

“She’d preferred the uncertainty, if only because it allowed her to remember him the way he used to be.”

“That’s why I loved being with you. We could do the simplest things, like toss starfish into the ocean and share a burger and talk and even then I knew that I was fortunate. Because you were the first guy who wasn’t constantly trying to impress me.”