Rescue

THE RESCUE by Nicholas Sparks The book opens with a horrific storm, and Denise Holton is driving home on the highway with her son Kyle. She loses control of the car and ends up in an accident, losing consciousness. If it hadn't been for volunteer fireman Taylor McAden coming to the rescue, she would have surely died. As Taylor is seeing to it that Denise is ok, Denise looks behind her car seat for her son Kyle, and discovers he is missing. The back door is open, and Taylor admits he did not know there was a boy in the car with her. She's in a panic, mainly because Kyle is not a normally adjusted child. For some unknown reason, Kyle has a problem with language, and will not come if someone were to call out his name. Knowing this, the search for Kyle would be impossible, especially since the car crash was near a swampy area known to lose people in normal weather. The odds of finding Kyle were pretty slim. Denise is taken to the hospital, while the search continues for the young 5-year old. Taylor, who seems to have the gift of finding and rescuing people, miraculously finds Kyle hiding in a duck blind, unharmed. Mother and son are reunited. Denise and Taylor develop a mutual attraction for each other, and slowly they start up a friendship that soon becomes a romance. Taylor seems to be the man of Denise's dreams, and to top it off he loves Kyle. Most persons who have met Kyle are awkward with him, because of his speech impediments and his learning disabilities. But, not Taylor. He treats little Kyle as a normal healthy boy, and soon Kyle becomes attached to his mother's new friend. Taylor is Kyle's hero and the father he never had. Denise watches as Kyle begins to develop better language skills and he does things he never was able to do before. He plays catch with Taylor. He rides on roller coasters. Kyle's life is totally changed. He slowly comes out of his shell. In the meantime, Denise and Taylor become closer. Things are going wonderfully well until they attend a party held by Taylor's closest friends Mitch and Melissa. Mitch is his childhood friend and together they are part of the volunteer fireman group. Melissa is like the sister Taylor never had, and she teases him throughout the gathering, asking whether he is going to marry Denise. Taylor reacts by choking on his food, and becomes distant the rest of the evening. Unsurprisingly, their relationship turns for the worse. Instead of seeing Denise every day and every night, Taylor uses work as an excuse for not coming by. He shuts her out, just as he did with every other girlfriend he's had. But, the difference between the other women and Denise is that Taylor really loves Denise, and he had felt that she was someone special in his life. So, why the change in behavior? Denise spends many nights in tears, wondering what had happened to the relationship that she so hesitantly opened her heart to. After years of not trusting any man to come into her life, she decided to trust Taylor. Obviously, there was a reason for Taylor's turnabout behavior. No one knows why he is unable to commit to any woman, but Denise eventually finds out. It's a tragic past that has held Taylor a prisoner, and it is up to those around him to set him free. I thoroughly enjoyed THE RESCUE. I've read a number of books by Nicholas Sparks, and I have to say that this is one of my favorites so far. For those of you who enjoy a good romance and tearjerker, this one is for you.

A deeply touching and moving story, one of those that only Nicholas Sparks seems so able to write. Denise, a single Mom, living in Edenton, South Carolina with her four year old speech challenged son Kyle. Her parents both died prematurely and she had inherited the home she lived in from her Grandparents. It was run down, needed a lot of fixing, but it was home and paid for. On a very stormy night with high winds and torrential rain she has an accident swerving to avoid a deer in the road and crashes into some trees off the road. A volunteer fireman named Taylor McAden finds her, the back door of the crunched Car is open and her son is gone. In a flash her life changes, and while she is injured and must go to hospital, a search for Kyle begins. Beautifully written, warmly human characters and a marvelous story. You won’t be able to put this one down!

This was quite a story. Another Nicholas Sparks classic. And I hadn’t read it before and it was copyrighted in 2000. I read a lot but I save these books for when I really need a boost. There are many good authors writing books today, there just aren’t many (If any) that can even be compared to Sparks. What I really enjoy about his books are that they are all different in Heroes and heroines and the stories that they tell. Somehow he keeps writing these stories without ever repeating himself. I’m in awe that not only that he does it, but that anyone can do it. Probably 90+% of the authors today can not do what he does. This story constantly brought tears to my eyes. And it was an educational story also in that Kyle was disadvantaged and that there was no name for what was his challenge. Then on top of rest of the story was the love story about a broken man, Taylor and the woman, Denise who finally helped him. And he also writes beautiful love scenes that aren’t crude or obscene. And again 90+% of the authors today can’t do that. I could continue forever with what I enjoy about these books but I’m going to stop and encourage you the reader to read, enjoy and also promote his books.

This is a story about fear, pain, love and redemption, a boy with a speech impediment and the broken man that falls in love with the boy's mother. This is my first Sparks novel and I found it moving and sad, with joy throughout. What I did not like (and it drove me nuts) was the constant translation of the boy's words. By the third chapter it was easy to interpret what he was saying. Why the author insisted on writing the sentences first, then how Kyle was pronouncing them, is beyond me. It just stopped the flow of the book. Good read if you can get past that.

I've heard so many people hyping this author, and really enjoyed the movie I saw made from one of his books (The Lucky One), so I thought I'd give him a read. But it was very quickly evident that the scriptwriters are better writers than the author. I'll give him kudos for having the basics down. None of the spelling and grammar errors that are rampant these days in the self-pubbed stuff.

Also, his concept was good, so I'll give him props for that.

What he's lacking in a lot of ways is the ability to show, rather than tell -- he rambles on forever, explaining the characters' emotions, to the point where I would just skip past several pages at a time -- and then find he was still on the same topic. Sometimes he'd spend 8 or 10 pages hammering on a point that he could have made in one or two sentences of action rather than repetitive exposition.

He does the same thing with other info. The book includes a child who has difficulty with language. This is obvious the first time we "see" the child, but the author goes on and on... and ON at the beginning of the book about it, and then later on, has the child's mother going on even longer about it, and explaining every step of the process she uses to work on the issue with him -- which at that point in the book was completely irrelevant. Worse, every time the child speaks, we get it twice. Once in quotes, followed by the same thing, rendered phonetically, in parentheses -- just in case we missed the fact that he has language issues.

Part of the problem may be that the author has difficulty prioritizing. Words are a bit like money, in the writing process -- you have to choose where you want to spend them, and try to get the most "bang for the buck," rather than just spending them randomly.

No spoilers, but there is a point at the very end of the book, where a crisis triggers serious issues for one of the protagonists. At that point the pacing is better, and the author begins to makes better choices about prioritizing. I felt as if the book would have made a decent novella or short -- everything before that crisis point could easily have been condensed into a chapter or two.