The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks and The Choice

While I'm not normally a sappy romantic, I have recently finished two books by Nicholas Sparks, The Choice and The Best of Me. 

When choosing books, I usually look for a good writer rather than a good story because I feel like a good writer can write any story and make it good.  Mr. Sparks is just such a writer as every book I have read by him has me on the edge wanting more and I always have this feeling of wanting to hurry up and find out what happens next.  

In The Choice, each of the main characters must make a choice.  One must choose between two men and the other must choose whether or not to pull the feeding tube on a coma patient.

In The Best of Me, high school sweethearts are reunited but their destiny is uncertain and, I must say, totally unpredictable.   This one is reminiscent of The Notebook.  

Like I mentioned before, I'm not usually into romance type novels but these are very well written and also very suspenseful.  And both will keep you up late at night trying to find out what will happen next.    I enjoyed them very much and I highly recommend anything by Nicholas Sparks.  All of his books are National Best Sellers and three of them have been made into motion pictures.

Both were published by Grand Central Publishing.

Gerald's Game by Stephen King

Gerald's Game by Stephen King

First let me say, I did NOT finish this book.  I got one third of the way through and I just couldn't finish  it.  Too much head noise for me.  

The book is a psychological thriller about a couple who have been married for 20 years and have taken a romantic trip to their remote lake house in Maine.  During a kinky sex episode, the wife is handcuffed to the bed against her will and accidentally kills her husband.  She is now alone with her thoughts and fears and her husband is dead.  Page after page we read how she feels, hear the voices inside her head, and I guess we are supposed to be scared but I was anything but.  Unless of course you count the mangy hound that came in and started feeding on the the dead husband.   I was actually bored throughout the few chapters I did read because of the monotonous details of thought and pain and misery.  And if that isn't bad enough, I didn't even like the woman.  

Way over the top!!

But if that is your thing, then you might enjoy it.  By all means, go for it.  

I want to add that this is the first book by Mr. King that I didn't enjoy.  He is the author of one of my all time favorites, The Green Mile. 

Published in 1993 by Signet.

The Deepest Waters by Dan Walsh

The Deepest Waters by Dan Walsh

Newlyweds, John and Laura Foster have set sail on their honeymoon on the SS Vandervere from San Francisco to New York in 1857.  Somewhere near the Carolinas, they are overtaken by a hurricane and the ship begins to sink.  Fortunately, the women and children are rescued by a smaller ship but the men are forced to stay behind.  Some of the men find objects to use a life preservers or rafts but others drown and go down when the ship sinks to the deepest depths of the sea.  

Laura travels with the other survivors on the smaller ship in deep despair as she believes her new husband to be drowned and her future uncertain as John's family in New York doesn't even know about her.  

Meanwhile, John and hundreds of other men are floating in the sea for days on end with no water or food.  

I don't want to give away too much so if you want to know how each of them fair, then you'll have to read the book for yourself. This is the second book I have read by Dan Walsh.  The first being, The Reunion which I have also reviewed and loved.   I thoroughly enjoyed the Deepest Waters and I must say that Mr. Walsh has a unique and wonderful style of writing all his own.  I said this before but I believe he writes a story as if he is telling it to a friend which I most enjoy.  I haven't encountered this style before from any authors I have read. There is a Christian flair to the story along with love, hope, faith, and courage above all.

Published in April 2011 by Revell Publishers, The Deepest Waters is an 2012 ACFW Carol Awards Finalist and was based on the true story of the steamship SS Central America.  

Dear America: I Walk in Dread, The Diary of Deliverance Trembley Witness to the Salem Witch Trials by Lisa Rowe Fraustino

Dear America:  I Walk in Dread, The Diary of Deliverance Trembley Witness to the Salem Witch Trials, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1691 by Lisa Rowe Fraustino

The story unfolds through the eyes and voice of twelve year old Deliverance Trembley, an orphan in Salem Village, Massachusetts in 1691.  Deliverance, or Liv as we come to know her, lives with her seventeen year old sister, Mem, in the house of her uncle who has left them to go on a whaling expedition with instructions that they are not to tell anyone in the village that he is away.  

During his absence, Mem becomes ill and Liv must care for her as well as do all of the chores.  The girls try to attend church when they can.  One Sunday they learn that four girls from their church have become possessed and claim that some of the good ladies of Salem Village are witches and have cursed them and damned them to the devil.  Liv is friends with one of the accused but doesn't believe the good Christian woman she knows could possibly be a witch nor does she believe in witches.  

Soon, the town becomes privy to the fact the uncle has been away and threaten to take action for the orphans.  Fortunately, their brother Benjamin, who has been in the militia returns and saves the girls from an uncertain future.  

Meanwhile, the accused witches are tried and eventually convicted.

While Liv and her sister are fictional characters, most of the other characters are real and the events portrayed in the story are real and given to the best of the writers research and knowledge.

While, I hardly ever read children's books or young adult fiction, I loved this book!  I read the whole thing in one night. Ms. Fraustino really did her homework and gave us an historical ride through the times and lives of the people during the Salem Witch Trials.  I can't wait to read more of the books in her Dear America series!  

Published in 2011 by Scholastic Books.

The Reunion by Dan Walsh

The Reunion by Dan Walsh is a story of an Vietnam veteran who has been all but forgotten.  After returning home from Vietnam, Aaron Miller loses everything, his family, his home and his old life as he struggles with depression while the whole country turns their backs on the war and the soldiers who fought in it.  Aaron turns to the streets and drugs and alcohol.  After several years he finds God and gets himself cleaned up but his family still refuses to accept him.  

Dave Russo is a reporter who is writing a book about Vietnam vets.  He contacts a famous vet to interview him for the book but the vet, John Lansing, tells Dave that the story should not be about him but about a war buddy who had saved the lives of three men in their platoon and who had won the Congressional Metal of Honor.  His name was Aaron Miller.  John and his two buddies insist that Dave find Aaron and bring him to their reunion. 

Dave agrees to search for Aaron and is excited about including such a hero in his book.  But what he doesn't know is that his life and the rest of the men's lives will be forever changed.  Especially Aaron Miller.  

Dan Walsh pens a story as if he is telling it to his best friend. There is heartbreak, love, and faith and eventually hope which will pull at your heartstrings throughout.  The book left me with such a good feeling that I highly recommend it. I couldn't put it down.  I love a good book that captures your interest right away and captivates you until it's all you can think about until it's finished.  I cried and I laughed. I really loved it!  I hope you check it out!

Published in September 2012 by Revell.

For One More Day by Mitch Albom

For One More Day by Mitch Albom is the story of a mother and son and the relationship that covers a lifetime and beyond.  

Charley "Chick" Benetto was told by his father that he could either be a mommy's boy or a daddy's boy and of course he chooses to be a daddy's boy playing baseball and spending most his time with his father until one day his father leaves home unexpectedly.  Chick grows up with just his mom and sister but has irrefutable damage to his psyche due to the divorce and becomes a bad husband, a bad father and an all around broken man who is even shunned by his own family.

He begins drinking heavily and one day decides to just end it all and commit suicide by driving his car off an embankment and into a billboard sign but his plan goes awry and he is thrown from the car and knocked unconscious.  While unconscious, he gets a visit from the spirit of his dead mother where he learns of things about her life and the sacrifices she has made for him.

What would we all give for just One More Day with a loved one?  I have personally wished for it many times.

Published in 2006 by Hyperion, For One More Day, despite mixed reviews from critics, made it to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. 

Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray

Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray is a novel about Clover, a mom in her early fifties whose family never looks at her face.  They speak to her and have meals with her but they never actually see her.  This predicament becomes evident when she wakes up one day and she is gone.  She literally disappears.   And if that's not bad enough, weeks go by before her family members, particularly her husband, even notice.  Luckily, her neighbor  and best friend Marjorie, notices right away dismissing her feelings of insanity.   Clover goes about her days as usual, unnoticed by the general public until one day she finds an ad in the paper for an "Invisible Women's Club" which she attends and learns that her invisibility is caused by certain medications she has been taking.  

The Invisible women then form a plan to force the pharmaceutical company to take the meds off the market and research a cure for their newfound disease.  

This book is insanely humorous and reflects the feeling of being invisible by most middle aged women who feel overlooked or faded into the background.  I liked it very much. 

Published in 2012 by Crown Publishing.  Go read it!

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

I read a review about this book online somewhere that said it was pretty good so I put it on hold at the library and I have to admit that for the first few chapters I was slightly bored but I'm glad I kept at it because I ended up enjoying this book very much and falling in love with the characters.  It became a quick read, a page turner for me. 

June Elbus is 13 years old when her uncle Finn, her best friend and her godfather, dies of Aids in 1982.  She is hurt and angry and feels left behind until she finds an unlikely friend in Finn's "other half", Toby whom she had not known during Finn's life.  It was a family secret kept from her because her mother felt like Toby gave the Aids to Finn and refused to have any relationship with him or let her family know him.  But we know that love always prevails and the family does come together full circle in the end. 

I felt like I could relate to both loner June and her outgoing sister Greta and having a sister myself, the tension and love between them. The characters in Tell the Wolves I'm Home come off as real and honest and I liked that.  

Published in June 2012 by the Random House Publishing Group.

Star Girl by Jerry Spinelli

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli is about a eccentric young girl named Stargirl Caraway who comes to Mica High School after being homeschooled all her life.  She is carefree, funny, and free spirited and immediately loved and liked by all. That is until the student body figures out how "different" she is and as we all know, different in high school is not always a good thing.  In Stargirl's case, it becomes a very bad thing as she is soon shunned and anyone who associates with her becomes shunned as well such as  a young man named Leo who finds himself in love with her.  Leo is torn between loving her the way she is and wanting her to be normal so that the two of them can fit in with everyone else.  He convinces her to act normal, which she does try to do, but it doesn't work.  The other students continue to treat her as invisible until .....

Well, you'll have to read the book to find out what happens in the end but I have to say, not being a huge fan of young adult or juvenile fiction, which I did not know this was until I was deep into the first chapter, this book is captivating and very well written.  I found myself unable to put it down and finished it within a day or so.  Fantastic for adults and children alike.  Read it then give it to your child to read.  I think we will all learn a thing or two from this novel.

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is interesting to me in that it falls into so many different book genres such as historical fiction, suspense, romance, and even perhaps a little on the dark side.

Jacob Jankowski is a veterinarian major in college when his parents are killed in an accident.  Left penniless, with only a few weeks left to finish school, he runs off and joins the circus, The Benzini Brothers Greatest Show on Earth.   He is hired on as head veterinarian (despite his failure to obtain his degree) and soon falls in love with Marlena, the beautiful equestrienne star who happens to be married to the boss.  When the show, which is set in the 1930's Depression era, begins to falter financially the boss buys an elephant named Rosie who brings the characters together in an unexpected way.

The characters are believable, whimsical, sometimes dark and you either love them or hate them.  I think my favorite character was Rosie the elephant who at first refuses to do anything the trainers tell her to do until Jacob discovers her secret.  The case of the animals as a whole is not unlike the feeling of how circus animals are portrayed today and I feel like that is a major influence in the book.

The book as a whole, toggles between the present and the past, not unlike Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook where the main character, in this case Jacob Jankowski who is either 90 or 93, is a nursing home resident remembering his past in one chapter then revealing the hardships of his present state in the next.

I found the book to be a fast paced, suspenseful novel that was well researched and written.  I enjoyed it very much and now I must see the movie.  The Redbox didn't have it though and it's no wonder since the movie came out in 2011.  I'm way behind in the times on this one.

Published in 2006 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Water for Elephants remained on the New York Times Bestseller list for six weeks, and was nominated for numerous awards including the illustrious Quill Award, the Entertainment Weekly Best Novel award, and won the BookBrowse award in 2007 for most popular book.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Miss Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan lives a mundane life in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960's playing bridge with the girls she grew up with and writing the newsletter for the Children's Benefit.  Skeeter dreams of a bigger and better life as an editor for a publishing company or for a magazine.  She writes to many places but the only job she can get is writing the domestic column for the local newspaper.  Skeeter doesn't know anything about domestic housekeeping as she has been raised in the south with a housekeeper who does all the house cleaning and all the cooking.

Since she doesn't know anything about housekeeping, Skeeter takes her column questions to her friend Elizabeth's housekeeper Aibileen.  Aibileen, reluctantly at first, answers all her questions and helps her with the column.  Soon they become friends and Aibileen tells her about her son who passed away and how he had dreams of writing a book about how blacks are treated by their white counterparts which gives Skeeter the idea for the book "The Help".  She hires Aibileen and twelve of her maid friends to tell stories for the book of working for whites in the South.  The stories tell of mistreatment, abuse and heartbreak but also of love and attachment for the children they help to raise.  And the telling of the stories itself is dangerous as it is set in the time of the civil rights movement and there are laws against whites and blacks conspiring together for any reason.   They have to very careful and meet in secrecy or someone could get hurt or worse.

I loved the dialogue of the book because you get the true nature and character of each of the maids through their voices.  Particularly Aibileen because she tries so hard to teach the white children she cares for to not be racist.

“Once upon a time they was two girls," I say. "one girl had black skin, one girl had white."
Mae Mobley look up at me. She listening.
"Little colored girl say to little white girl, 'How come your skin be so pale?' White girl say, 'I don't know. How come your skin be so black? What you think that mean?'
"But neither one a them little girls knew. So little white girl say, 'Well, let's see. You got hair, I got hair.'"I gives Mae Mobley a little tousle on her head.
"Little colored girl say 'I got a nose, you got a nose.'"I gives her little snout a tweak. She got to reach up and do the same to me.
"Little white girl say, 'I got toes, you got toes.' And I do the little thing with her toes, but she can't get to mine cause I got my white work shoes on.
"'So we's the same. Just a different color', say that little colored girl. The little white girl she agreed and they was friends. The End."
Baby Girl just look at me. Law, that was a sorry story if I ever heard one. Wasn't even no plot to it. But Mae Mobley, she smile and say, "Tell it again.” 

I think this is an important book, even in modern times, because it shows not only how far we have come towards racial improvement but how far we still have to go.  I laughed and I cried and I gobbled the whole thing up in less than a week. 

Published by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (February 10, 2009).

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

After reading Stephen King's colossal 11/22/63, The Notebook was like a decadent, rich, and smooth midnight snack.  I read the whole thing in about three hours.

The setting is coastal North Carolina, 1940's and Noah Calhoun is haunted by the ghost of a girl he once loved.  Everywhere he looks and everywhere he goes he is reminded of the love they once shared.  But she has been out of his life for more than a decade.

Allie Nelson is also haunted by the past and passions lost.  She is engaged to be married to another but she cannot go through with it until she is sure that is what she really wants.  So makes a trip back to New Bern, North Carolina to flirt with the past and see where her heart takes her.

She finds Noah sitting on the porch of his family home, alone and over the next few days, the two try to rekindle the flame that never went out. Will Allie follow her heart and stay with the man she never stopped loving or will she return to the socialite lifestyle she is expected to live?

"I would love to tell you that everything will work out for us, and I promise to do all I can to make sure it does.  But if we never meet again and this is truly good-bye, I know we will see each other again in another life.  We will find each other again, and maybe the stars will have changed, and we will not only love each other in that time, but for all the times we've had before."

I usually don't go in for romance novels but I knew that this book was a bestseller for over a year, all over the world and that it had been made into a movie and I found it at a thrift shop so I thought, why not?  I'm glad I did.  Every girl wishes for such a passionate romance and soul partner that Allie has found in Noah.  This is one of the greatest love stories ever told.

Electric Barracuda by Tim Dorsey

This is Tim Dorsey's 13th book starring the ever practical yet psycho Florida fugitive, Serge Storms.  This time Serge takes on us on a fun and frolicking "fugitive tour" of Florida.  He keeps a blog and of course he has his faithful, yet stoned sidekick Coleman by his side every step of the way.

Serge is, as usual, being hunted by Federal agents, a bounty hunter, a whole caravan of characters, and his ex-wife in a Turquoise colored T-bird.   We take a trip throughout the sunshine state to see the back streets and "under belly" of Florida including The Everglades, Orlando, Venice, Myakka River, Tampa, and so on.

Besides the "fugitive tour", Serge has a mission this time to help his Grandfather's old gang on the Loop Road to recover funds stolen by a shady lawyer.  Will Serge complete his mission? Will the trackers catch up to him this time?  Will Agent Mahoney, his nemesis, track him down?  Go get this fun, laugh out loud, comedy and found out for yourself.

I can't help but wonder who would play Serge and Coleman in a movie?  Or Agent Mahoney?  I think it would a great movie!

Tim Dorsey is an ex-writer for the Tampa Tribune.  Electric Barracuda was published in 2011 by William Morrow.

The Magic(The Secret) by Rhonda Byrne

In the book's predecessor,  The Secret, Rhonda Byrne teaches us about the Law of Attraction.  Like attracts like.  So if you think positively, you attract positive things to you.  If you think negatively, you attract negative things to you.  It's the law of the Universe.

In The Magic, Rhonda advises the reader to practice saying "thank you" and meaning it.
Say thank you deliberately and with meaning.
The more you say thank you, the more you feel gratitude.
The more gratitude you give out, the more abundance you will receive.  

With practice, the book could teach you how to improve your life in the areas of love, health, wealth, and happiness. 

If you think, "I don't like my job," "I haven't got enough money", "I can't find my perfect partner," "I can't pay my bills," "I think I'm coming down with something," "My child is a problem," "My life is a mess," or "My marriage is in trouble," then you must attract more of those experiences.

But if you think about what you're grateful for, like, "I love my job," "My family is very supportive," "I had the best vacation," "I feel amazing today," "I got the biggest tax refund ever," or "I had a great weekend camping with my son," and you sincerely feel the gratitude, the law of attraction says you must attract more of those things into your life.  It works the same way as metal being drawn to a magnet; your gratitude is magnetic, and the more gratitude you have, the more abundance you magnetize.  It is Universal Law!

I believe and I think you should read this book.  What could it hurt?