The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks
I have been carrying this book around in my purse for months meaning to start it whenever I had to wait in a doctor's office or wait for a carry out dinner. It never happened. So when I decided I needed to start reading a book a week to make my goal by my 40th birthday, I started looking at home for books I already had. So technically this one falls under the "New York Times Best Seller List" as well as the "Finish books in my current collection List". Killing two birds with one book!
I must admit that this is the first Nicholas Sparks book I've read. While I have seen some of the movie adaptations, I have never actually picked up one of the books. I don't know why it's taken me so long. I lived in North Carolina for over 4 years and considering most of his stories take place in that beautiful state, I probably should have been a fan from the beginning. I have to say that I really enjoy reading authors who write about places I've been or lived because it is so much easier to get a good "movie" going in my head.
The basis of this book is a marine, Logan, in Iraq finds a picture of a woman and he starts having near misses in combat. While others around him are killed, he continues to be saved from gunfire and explosions. One of his friends convinces Logan to go find the woman in the picture because she is his lucky charm. Logan's search sends him to a small town in North Carolina where he finds Beth, the woman in the picture. He doesn't know how to tell her about the picture, but they begin to fall in love. This is made more difficult by an ex-husband, Keith, who's family pretty much "owns" the town.
I enjoyed Mr. Sparks' descriptions of the towns and it brought back the memories of the hot, sticky southern summers as well as the beauty often inherent in those small historic towns. Beth also has a son who is more into music and reading than sports and video games (every mother's dream right?). She is a teacher and Sparks' description of that part of her character pleasantly surprised me. It made me think that either his wife is a teacher or he has a teacher in his family as he is spot on about the demands of that job, especially in the beginning of the school year. There were so many aspects of this story that were parallels to my own life that made it easy for me to relate to the characters' emotional states.
The love story is not so fantastic that it is unbelievable and I appreciated the PG-13 rating of Mr. Sparks' writing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a prude. But I am a Christian and when I can find a good love story where I don't have to get bogged down in the specifics of the sexual encounters, it makes for a much smoother reading. I don't even think I read one cuss word in the entire book. It's refreshing to find a writer who can tell a story that is relatable and thoroughly engaging without being crass and too sexual.
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