The Rescue

Nicholas Sparks is one of my favorite authors. He knows how to tell a story. This book was educational for me as well. Learning about children growing up with autism not only the challenges they face but how to interact with them socially. Also, all the struggles the mother goes through. I loved this book! It made me cry, laugh, there was a love story intertwined, personal struggles, educational.

Nicholas Sparks is a consummate author of stories about mature relationships where couples with flawed histories discover one another. "The Rescue" demonstrates all of Sparks' undoubted skills in writing this kind of book with a fair dose of tear jerking thrown in for good measure. Single mother Denise Holton is driving home during a bad storm when she swerves to avoid an animal on the road and her car skids off the road, knocking her out and trapping her. When volunteer fireman Taylor McAden rescues Denise the back door of the car is open and her four-year-old son Kyle, a boy with severe learning and speaking disabilities, has disappeared into the surrounding forest. Taylor leads a search team to find Kyle in the dark during an intense rainstorm. The search is made more difficult because Kyle is not able to answer their calls. Denise's life as a single mother with a young son with learning difficulties has been hard. She has recently moved to the small town of Edenton, North Carolina, spending most of the day teaching Kyle and working the late shift as a waitress. It has been a lonely life which has not left any time to make friends or have a relationship. Taylor has always been a loner who feels compelled to take terrifying risks to save lives but something in his past has made it impossible for him to have a serious relationship. A tender connection between Taylor and Denise, and especially with Kyle, develops. Taylor has to face his past if this relationship can continue. I read some of Nicholas Sparks' books as an interlude from my regular diet of sometimes pretty heavy thrillers. This one gave me the interlude I needed and once again this was a good tear jerking tale about complex human relationships. This time, probably, because I have read a few of Sparks books with similar themes, the story was a little bit too predictable, especially the Epilogue.

Really enjoyed reading about the three main characters . Each were fascinating in their own way. Courage a d strength were especially evident in each of them. As the story weaves it's way into our hearts, we are gripped in their real life story. Just when when you think you know the next bend in the road, Nicholas changes course. I thoroughly enjoyed this read.

Seems Taylor is always in the right place at the right time. As the story opens Taylor rescues Denise. whose car has skidded off the road in the swamp during a severe storm, but her four year old son is no where to be found near the car. With twenty men searching, Taylor discovers the boys several hours later. His relationships have been one rescue after another, only to drop the relationship when the next damsel appears in distress. The problem is Taylor needs to be rescues from his own past, and only he can do it.

NS while not holding a monopoly on great love stories, certainly holds the head-and-shoulders above the rest on that rare ability to get the reader to completely forget they're reading and allow the brain to creat movement and pictures and deep deep personal emotional involvement. All his books. In The Rescue he writes a wonderfully entangled but clever love story. I defy anyone to read it without biting off huge chunks of story they personally have known, traversed and emerged from. Its a love story. To comment on the plot would be to spoil the journey. If you have ever loved and lost, loved and won, loved at a distance, loved and hated yourself for destroying and running...read The Rescue.