The Wedding

by Nicholas Sparks

 

A friend of mine told me to read this story because the ending is so unexpected. I have always loved Nicholas Sparks because his poignant tales that could make me cry. It seems tangible and real that you could’ve wished you’ll have the same story with of course, a different and happier endings (since he has the chance to break your heart at the end of his book).

 

After more than 20 years of marriage, Wilson Lewis, son-in-law of Allie and Noah Calhoun (from The Notebook) is forced to admit that the romance has gone out of his marriage. Desperate to win back his wife Jane’s heart, he must figure out how to make her fall in love with him. Again. Despite the shining example of Allie and Noah’s marriage, Wilson is himself a man unable to easily express his emotions. A successful tax attorney, he has provided well for his family, but now, with his daughter’s upcoming wedding and an impending empty nest, he is forced to face the fact that he and Jane have grown apart and he wonders if she even loves him anymore. Wilson is sure of one thing-his love for his wife has only deepened and intensified over the years. Now, with the memories of his in-laws’ magnificent fifty- year love affair as his guide, Wilson struggles to find his own way back into the heart of the woman he adores.

 

The first part of the story is quite misleading, but this may be the author’s intention. Indeed, the whole book talks about the family getting ready for a big wedding. But the reader will realize at the end of the book that the plot is much more than just THE WEDDING. A charming and romantic novel is discovery of a man’s journey towards reinventing himself as a spouse and making precious memories along the way. This story is told in the first person voice of Wilson who tells the tale of eternal love that may turn the most cynical person into a romantic fool.

 

Sidney Sheldon

Kate Blackwell is one of the richest women in the world. She is an enigma, a woman surrounded by unanswered questions. Her father was a diamond prospector who struck it rich, her mother the daughter of a crooked Afrikaaner merchant. On her ninetieth birthday ghosts haunt Kate’s thoughts.

Sheldon is my mother’s favorite author. I haven’t really read him until there was no book to read but his. Now I know why my mother loves him. This is the first book that I have read. I love Katherine’s character, she’s tough and scheming. She manipulated everyone’s life around her for her convenience, this cost her son.

This is a saga of a millionaire family across five generations starting from South Africa when a penniless Scot immigrant Jamie Blackwell try to find his luck to make the beginning of a huge fortune in the diamond business, to his daughter Kate in her 90s distressed in finding a successor to run the business empire she built.

The whole book is filled with almost every human passion and emotion you can think of: greed, fear, jealousy, love, sex and death. It is a one great story and the plot progresses at very fast pace. The characters are memorable and are unique in their own ways. The twist and turns are jaw-dropping that you couldn’t help but to turn page after page. I am sure you could not put the book down. So, if you don’t have the time, don’t start reading it!