The Best of Me
by Nicholas Sparks

THE BEST OF ME is the heart-rending story of two small-town former high school sweethearts from opposite sides of the tracks. Now middle-aged, they’ve taken wildly divergent paths, but neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever altered their world. When they are both called back to their hometown for the funeral of the mentor who once gave them shelter, they will be forced to confront the choices each has made, and ask whether love can truly rewrite the past. ~ Goodreads

ISBN: 0446547654 (ISBN13: 9780446547659)
Primary Language: English
Original Title: The Best of Me

Before I start my review, I would like to quote Nicholas Sparks, the author, first, when asked why he always kills a main character in his novels:

“Every genre has a purpose. The thriller is meant to thrill, a horror novel is supposed to scare you, a romance novel is a romantic fantasy.” He adds, “The purpose of that genre (romance) is to move the reader through all the emotions of life; that’s what I’m supposed to do [as a writer of romance novels]. If I eliminate one of the major emotions of life, you’ll close [the book] because it doesn’t feel real to you.” Nicholas goes on to say, “All love stories, by definition, have to end in tragedy.”

Well, Mr. Sparks, you did a very good job of moving me in all your novels even if I sometimes don’t like how it ends. lol.

As soon as I got my hands on my copy of The Best of Me, I started reading it. Browsing at first but had to go back and read page after page properly when I realize this book surely deserves my full attention. Yep, you guessed it right, I was reading a rather “dragging” book that required all my willpower and love for all things books not to throw it out the window! I guess that’s one hazard of being a book reviewer – you will eventually get frustrating ones even if the author is popular and well-known.

Anyway, back to The Best of Me, I must admit, this is clearly not Mr. Sparks’ best novel as that belongs to The Notebook, no less. I will also say that I felt it didn’t quite hit its mark properly, like there was something lacking, like the story is almost there. The  Best of Me almost made me cry. Almost.

However I am still giving it a 5 because definitely The Best of Me is worth your time reading. Why? Because it is the kind of story that sticks hours after you’re done reading it. Believe me, you won’t be disappointed.

So the story started with Dawson Cole, the main character in this novel, seeing a mystery man who he later thought to be always saving his life from potentially fatal incidents. He thought this man was his friend Tuck who died at around the same time he started seeing the  mystery man. The same Tuck who was the reason why he came back home after so many years, only to be reunited with Amanda – his first love.

The situation was made complicated by Amanda’s being married and with three kids. Add to that Dawson’s family situation as he is not in good terms with his family – at all. Dawson was practically gambling his life by being in town but he stayed just to be able to fulfill Tuck’s wishes, and be with Amanda. Then there’s the accident – the one that changed Dawson’s life forever – that still haunted Dawson until the very end.

I hated the ending. I just think that death in this novel is not justifiable but reading the interview (quoted above) I realized that a story doesn’t have to be written the way I like it but how it was able to move the  reader. It moved me so the novel did what it’s supposed to do. 

Like I said, I enjoyed the novel; I couldn’t put it down and it almost made me cry so definitely a 5!

Cheers!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta Lacks, a poor Southern tobacco farmer, was buried in an unmarked grave sixty years ago. Yet her cells – taken without her knowledge – became one of the most important tools in medical research. Known to science as HeLa, the first “immortal” human cells grown in culture are still alive today, and have been bought and sold by the millions. Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to East Baltimore today, where Henrietta’s family struggles with her legacy.

Publisher: Crown; First Edition edition (February 2, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400052173
ISBN-13: 978-1400052172

Very interesting. However, you need to have a “brush with cancer” in order to really feel this book. The story is good, in fact, a “must-know/must-read” but the author could have written it better. There is something lacking here but in terms of research and real life story telling, it was a good read, very informational and the author was able to stick to the facts.

What I do know though is that the author went out of her way to locate a family who would rather go missing and somewhat allergic to anything media. Of course, the experience has been traumatic for all of them. The immediate family was uncooperative and I could tell from the book that the author really tried to establish close connections to the family just to make this book happen. This I give the author credit for.

What’s ironic though is that Henrietta could have been considered as lucky since her cells are immortal but in my heart I know this isn’t true. The lady cannot be called as lucky since she suffered tremendously as well as her family and the injustices thrown at their family was made apparent by the book. While the medical community is happily using Henrietta’s cell for “medical advancement”, her family is not even receiving medical care which I find really heartbreaking – Henrietta herself didn’t receive adequate medical care when she was suffering from cancer. So sad.

I buried my mother 3 years ago due to breast cancer so this book really hit home. Now I am wondering if 20, 30 years from now I would find my own mother’s cell in a lab somewhere as we were told hers was a rare kind of cancer strain. I hope not as it was hard coping as it was only to find out that someone violated my mother’s body.

Due my strong feelings about the book, nevermind the way it was presented by the author to readers, I am giving this  book a 4 out of 5.

The Help
by Kathryn Stockett

Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women-mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends-view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (February 10, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0399155341
ISBN-13: 978-0399155345

I have tremendously enjoyed reading this book that I even looked for another good chicklit to read right after The Help. I believe this book was inspired by real stories (there was even an issue surrounding the book that the author stole the story from their own colored maid who babysat for their family a couple of times back then and was being sued by the said maid. The maid claimed that the likeness of the characters, particularly Abileen, to her own cannot be denied however the court dismissed the case) Despite a couple of discrepancies as the story being somewhat historical (and this being admitted and mentioned by the author in the book), I find the story a real page turner and I liked that the author did not really need a love angle to make the story interesting.

There were heartbreaks, disappointments, triumphs and other emotions only a woman could understand. Maybe this is also the reason why I come to love this book since it was able to arouse forgotten emotions from me just by reading it. There was real, true emotions there and the reader can certainly feel them.

I can certainly relate to Skeeter, one of the main characters, having grown up in a family where help is a necessity, I learned to appreciate the work and labor of our household help. That being said, I would like to consider myself growing on the wrong side of town as Skeeter was. lol. I never felt that it was a privilege for them to be working for us nor was it our good graces to give them work. This must be the reason why I fought my husband hard not to get me a maid even if it is completely necessary for us to have one. Well, you know how “woman of the house” always win. lol

On the not so good side, there were characters that remained a mystery to me although they didn’t bother me that much. Take for example the case of Miss Celia, grew up in tough area but cannot really handle housework. That didn’t sound really right. I felt that there were characters that weren’t given some justice which gives the novel a somewhat “unfinished” feel into it.

Overall, I’m giving this book a 5.

Cheers!

A Stolen Life: A Memoir
by Jaycee Dugard

In the summer of 1991 I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother who loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen.

For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse.

For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible situation.

On August 26, 2009, I took my name back. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I don’t think of myself as a victim. I survived.

A Stolen Life is my story—in my own words, in my own way, exactly as I remember it.

Genre: Nonfiction
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 12, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1451629184
ISBN-13: 978-1451629187

I love reading true crimes as much as I love reading psych books. Call it fetish but I find true-to-life books more fascinating since it explains basic human nature. Perhaps it is my thirst for understanding human behavior, or some other things but that’s just the way it is. lol

The first time this book ever came out of Amazon’s bestsellers list, I instantly marked it as my “to-read” and by God, I will! Maybe by skipping the next 5 ones on my list, I’ll be able to make it by the end of the month. teehee. Will update you guys!

UPDATE 08.13.2011

Finally I was able to get around to reading and reviewing this book! Just for the record, it took me two days so that’s, in my vocabulary, a page-turner.

I believe that if there was an editor or someone to prettify the texts, they didn’t do much on this book but spellcheck. While reading it, I felt that it was really Jaycee telling me her story. The book was really her words. No fancy lines, no pretensions.

However, having read the book Room by Emma Donoghue, i find the story eerily similar to it’s look and feel. Even some parts of the story went the same as the other. If it were just another fiction story, I would have accused it of copying Miss Donoghue’s story but we all know Miss Dugard’s book really happened – unfortunately.

One word of caution though, if you’re looking for a literary piece, look someplace else. This book is for those who simply would like to know what happened to Miss Dugard while in captivity and how she was able to cope all those years. She told her story the way she felt them writing. There’s even a “reflection” at the end of every chapter. The book has the look and feel of a reflection book or for some, a journal.

The book is mainly her feelings during and after captivity so if you are expecting a Gregg Olsen or an Ann Rule type of writing, might as well wait for them to actually write Jaycee’s book. There will be no explanation how Nancy or Phillip Garrido ended up like that, no discussions of their childhood either. This book is solely Jaycee. This is part of her road to healing.

Overall, I’m going to give it a 3 out of 5. While I commend Miss Dugard of her bravery to write a book, there were some parts of the book I didn’t really enjoy. Some were discussed over and over, like Phillip’s obsession with angels, etc. These are the things that I would like to know once and move on to more important details like how they were rescued or how the kids reacted when they were told that she is their mom, not Nancy. I feel that the book would have improved tremendously if it was co-written by someone professional.

But hey, writing a book about a traumatic experience takes a lot of courage so I’m giving two thumbs up to Miss Dugard’s bravery

Before I Go to Sleep
by S. J. Watson

S. J. Watson makes his powerful debut with this compelling, fast-paced psychological thriller, reminiscent of Shutter Island and Memento, in which an amnesiac who, following a mysterious accident, cannot remember her past or form new memories, desperately tries to uncover the truth about who she is—and who she can trust.

Hardcover: 368 pages
Pub. Date: June 2011
Publisher: Harper; First Edition edition
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0062060554
ISBN-13: 978-0062060556

For a debut, this book isn’t so bad, in fact I firmly believe that the author has vision and he’ll go a long way. I liked the way the story began and how it ended as well. The author managed to keep me guessing until the big revelation which, in my book, is very good. The only thing that I didn’t like about the book was at some point, I felt that the author played heavily on the main character’s mental condition. If you read it from point a to b, you’ll see that the story is quite like a straight line, doesn’t have much conflict save for the amnesia itself. It could have been more interesting if it had some other conflicting factor to affect the story line.

But that was just me. Perhaps I was expecting too much since ratings are quite high and the synopsis is really interesting. Like I said, S. J. Watson is not bad at all and I would definitely give his next novel a shot