Every Breathe by Nicholas Sparks

It had been some time since I’d read a Nicholas Sparks book.  I’ve read a lot of his books in the past and have really enjoy all of them.  They are full of kismet/fate/destiny and I’m a bit of a sucker for that kind of stuff.  Mostly because I really do believe that life is a series of events taking us places we’d never imagine for ourselves.

This is the story of Hope and Tru.  Tru is from Zimbabwe in town to meet his biological father and Hope is in North Carolina visiting her family’s cabin before they sell it.  Her dad has recently been diagnosed with ALS and her long-term relationship is a bit on the rough side.

Nicholas inserts himself into the story by saying he found it in this mailbox in NC called “Kindred Spirit” (which is a term I’m rather familiar with at this point in my life).  This fictional encounter of finding the story in a mailbox is what he uses to explain his hiatus from writing and the research needed to write this book.  While Kindred Spirit does actually exist, he didn’t find the story in the mailbox.

Tru happens to meet Hope when he helps her dog after it has an unfortunate encounter with a car (the dog is fine).  They hit it off immediately, only the only reason we know this is because of the different inside the persons head perspective that we got.  The both felt fairly powerless to stop what was going on.  (An interesting feeling.) We got to follow their story to the end.  It took some turns I expected but the ending....

Oh the ending was just perfection.  It was exactly what I wanted.  Yes, there were a few tears shed about it (because it is Nicholas Sparks after all) but it was a wonderful ending.  It felt more true-to-life than some of his other books.  Not true-to-life because it happens everyday but just true to how life should work.  True to the fact that sometimes love finds us and there is literally nothing a person can do to stop it and sometimes it teaches us more about love and ourselves than we ever dreamed could be possible.

Overall, my new favorite Sparks book.  (Disclaimer: there are some I haven’t read.)

I’ll leave you with some of my favorite passages from the book:

• The destiny that matters most in anyone’s life is the one concerning love.
• I say a prayer of thanks for your presence in my life ever day, and with every breath.
• “Why would you care?” / Because I care about you, he thought.  Instead, he said, “Because sometimes, all a person needs is for someone else to listen.”
• The suggestion caught him off guard, but he took the letter, feeling her hand brush against his. He thought how relaxed they already seemed to be with each other, and how easy it woul be to fall for someone like her. An that maybe just maybe, he was already falling, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
• Last week, I didn’t even know you existed, so part of me can’t help but wonder whether I’m crazy. Because I know that I love you.
• The invitation, she speculated, was the domino that, when toppled, set in motion the rest of her life. The choreography that had let to the most profound experience of love she’d ever had struck her as both scripted and improbable, but she wondered again to what end.

320 pages