The Best of Me
By Nicholas Sparks
Paperback, 304 pages
Published by Grand Central Publishing, October 11, 2011
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?
Ah, Nicholas Sparks! The tearjerker book, the want to love but hate characters, the setting always set on the east coast, on the coast, somewhere. I wanted to like The Best of Me, but I'm still not sure about it. It's a book, like many others, that tells a story of a young love, lost, rekindled, then lost again. It's such a vicious cycle!
Dawson Cole fell in love with Amanda Collier in the summer of 1984 (by the way, I turned two that summer) and by the end of the summer, things start to go wrong.
Dawson and Amanda are from two different parts of town, and Dawson's family is from the wrong side, always making mischief and creating havoc in other peoples lives. Dawson is eventually part of a tragedy and is sent to prison. Upon release, he starts to work in an oil rig. There was an exposion, and Dawson is faced with post-traumatic stress disorder, seeing a man in a windbreaker he swears was saving him after the explosion.
Amanda is from a wealthy family who has the life she dreamed of. However, when she marries, her husband is an alcoholic and makes her miserable. She has always, always, pictured herself with Dawson and has not been happy at all since they parted.
Tuck, a mutual friend of theirs from back home in Oriental, North Carolina, passes away, and his attorney requests that Dawson come in for a meeting. When he arrives at the attorney's office, who else should the attorney have also called into town, but Amanda, who was also friends with Tuck. Tuck requested that Dawson and Amanda scatter his ashes in the same area he had scattered his wife's ashes, in a field of wildflowers near his cottage house. Now, what Tuck really wanted was a reunion between Dawson and Amanda, and he had requested that they spend the weekend at the cottage house. They think Tuck was a bit crazy, but decide to travel up to the cottage. There, they rekindle a romance lost twenty-some years ago, also as per Tuck's request. Tuck was always the romantic!
While all of this is happening, Dawson's cousins, Ted and Abee, have found out that Dawson has come back to town, and vow for revenge on him for beating them up all those years ago. So that's pretty much what happens. Amanda is called away because there is a tragedy in her family, and Dawson has a run-in with his cousins that ends up pretty badly.
Overall, this book left me wanting me to write it all over again. Even though Sparks' previous works were written well, I felt this one was more forced. Since I am recommending the book, if you do decide to go buy the book, please just be open to reading a little of it, then putting it down and reading something else or going about your day. That's what happened with this one for me.
The Best of Me
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