The Best of Me

When I need a dose of small town America wrapped in a saccharine sweet love story, I look for Nicholas Sparks.

Like "A Walk to Remember" and "The Notebook", Sparks' latest offering, "The Best of Me" employs the time tested formula of two young people, falling in love in small town America, set in a conservative rural society that inevitably frowns on them as they are born on different sides of society. In this book, the two separate under painful circumstances and they walk very separate paths. But a chance meeting 25 years later resurrects their passion. Only this time, neither is without baggage, and there are no longer easy choices.

This is one of Sparks' better books. The two lead characters are well developed. But more importantly, the story allows the exploration of moral and life issues, choices, hope, second chances, forgiveness, responsibility and most of all, of dreams. For older readers, there is empathy for the two characters. All of us have made bad choices, and we are in the end the choices we make. Or are we? Do we get a second chance?

The writing may be a little less tight than I would have liked, and the plot too dramatic, but overall its definitely worth a read.