Review by Booklist Review
Sparks has carved out a niche for himself as one of the top male authors of romantic melodrama. Taylor McAden is a contractor by profession, but his passion is his work as a volunteer firefighter in the small town of Edenton, North Carolina. Driven by his unarticulated feelings about his father's death, he's always ready to help and prides himself on taking risks that no other man would take. At 36, Taylor has always shied away from relationships, but he finds it hard to distance himself from Denise Holden and her learning-disabled son, Kyle, whom he helps rescue from a car accident. Denise has come to Edenton because she inherited a house from her late grandparents and needs to live rent-free so she can devote herself to Kyle. Struggling to make ends meet as a single mom, she is surprised to find herself attracted to a man like Taylor, who is so different from the educated men she met when she lived and worked in Atlanta as a teacher. As Denise watches Taylor treat Kyle as he would a normal child, she realizes that he truly is special and opens her heart to him. When their relationship becomes serious, however, Taylor pulls away, but when tragedy once again enters his life, Denise is the one he wants most. All of Sparks' trademark elements--love, loss, and small-town life--are present in this terrific summer read. --Patty Engelmann
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Secret traumas again haunt Sparks's characters, in the author's fourth novel (after The Notebook; Message in a Bottle; A Walk to Remember). Denise Holden, the 29-year-old heroine, is destitute and forced to live in her mother's old house in Edenton, N.C. She's also the single mother of a handicapped child, Kyle, a four-year-old with "auditory processing problems" that render him unable to express himself or to fully understand others. Though she doesn't suspect it, Denise is on a literal collision course with true love. After she smashes her car into a tree and wakes up to discover Kyle missing, she finds deliverance in the form of Taylor McAden, dashing firefighter and compulsive risk taker, who rescues Kyle, too. Since Taylor enjoys an instant, unprecedented rapport with Kyle, there is little standing in the way of burgeoning romance. Trouble comes, however, when Denise learns of Taylor's checkered romantic past. Taylor's inability to commit, it seems, is somehow tied to his compulsive heroism, of which numerous histrionic examples are described. Denise's quest to find the source of Taylor's emotional distance takes up the final third of the book. The story here is mostly a pretext for the emotional assault that Sparks delivers, but when he manages to link affect to action, the result is cunningly crafted melodrama. These occasions are rare, though; more often Sparks gets bogged down in interminable interior monologue. Because these characters are preordained lovers, their feelings prescribed by fiction conventions, their psychology amounts to little more than a profusion of banality. Yet Sparks's narrative acquires immediacy when his characters' exaggerated emotions compel immoderate actions, and his readers will surely delight at these moments of heightened expressiveness. 1 million first printing; 24-city author tour. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Though detractors may say he writes "like a girl," the would-be king of romance (The Notebook) continues to please his readers. In Edenton, a small town on the North Carolina coast, Denise Holton struggles to raise her young son, Kyle, alone. Adding to her isolation is her time-consuming effort to combat Kyle's severe language-processing disability. As a result of a car accident during a storm, she meets Taylor McAden, a local contractor and volunteer fireman. Though Taylor seems to be meant for DeniseÄhe evidently loves Kyle as wellÄhe suffers from a classic case of "can't commit." But is it more than that? What's behind the faade of this charming rescuer? Taylor comes close to losing what he most desires as he finally confronts his secret demons. This novel will appeal to female readers seeking another romantic story with a happy ending.ÄRebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
High-stakes weepmeister Sparks ( A Walk to Remember , 1999, etc.) opts for a happy ending his fourth time out. His writing has improvedthough it's still the equivalent of paint-by-numbersand he makes use this time of at least a vestige of credible psychology. That vestige involves the deep dark secretit has something to do with his father's death when son Taylor was ninethat haunts kind, good 36-year-old local contractor Taylor McAden and makes him withdraw from relationships whenever they start getting serious enough to maybe get permanent. He's done this twice before, and now he does it again with pretty and sweet single mother Denise Holton, age 29, who's moved from Atlanta to Taylor's town of Edenton, North Carolina, in order to devote her time more fully to training her four-year-old son Kyle to overcome the peculiar impediment he has that keeps him from achieving normal language acquisition. Okay? When Denise has a car accident in a bad storm, she's rescued by volunteer fireman Taylorwho also rescues little Kyle after he wanders away from his injured mom in the storm. Love blooms in the weeks that followuntil Taylor suddenly begins putting on the brakes. What is it that holds him back, when there just isn't any question but that he loves Denise and vice versa-not to mention that he's "great" with Kyle, just like a father? It will require a couple of near-death experiences (as fireman Taylor bravely risks his life to save others); emotional steadiness from the intelligent, good, true Denise; and the terrible death of a dear and devoted friend before Taylor will come to the point at last of confiding to Denise the terrible memory of how his father diedand the guilt that's been its legacy to Taylor. The psychological dam broken, love will at last be able to flow. More Hallmarkiana, from a shameless expert in the genre.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
