Synopsis:
Hope Anderson is at a crossroads. At thirty-six, she’s been dating her boyfriend, an orthopedic surgeon, for six years. With no wedding plans in sight, and her father recently diagnosed with ALS, she decides to use a week at her family’s cottage in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, to ready the house for sale and mull over some difficult decisions about her future.
Tru Walls has never visited North Carolina but is summoned to Sunset Beach by a letter from a man claiming to be his father. A safari guide, born and raised in Zimbabwe, Tru hopes to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his mother’s early life and recapture memories lost with her death. When the two strangers cross paths, their connection is as electric as it is unfathomable . . . but in the immersive days that follow, their feelings for each other will give way to choices that pit family duty against personal happiness in devastating ways.
Illuminating life’s heartbreaking regrets and enduring hope, Every Breath explores the many facets of love that lay claim to our deepest loyalties — and asks the question, How long can a dream survive?
My Review:
“The destiny that matters most in anyone’s life is the one concerning love.”
This was my first book by Nicholas Sparks and I fell in love with the characters!!! MY HEART!! I re-read the beginning several times after I finished Hope and Tru’s story because I needed to know more about these characters. This is a wonderfully adult story about a chance meeting that becomes the central event in these two people’s lives. This story spans many decades and will have you sobbing at the end.
“We met on a Wednesday morning, and I’d fallen in love with him by Thursday evening.”
Sounds unbelievable, right? But the way Sparks creates his characters and the setting, Tru and Hope were at the perfect time in their lives to fall in love with each other. Try is a tour guide from Zimbabwe who has traveled to North Carolina at the invitation of his biological father. Tru grew up with a stepfather he never really liked and a grandfather he feared.
Tru has a young son but but is curious to learn more about his mother from the man who loved her many years ago.
As fate (or destiny) would have it, he meets Hope on the beach on his first morning in America. She’s only visiting for the weekend to attend her friend’s wedding. She’s staying in her family’s beach-front cottage and preparing it for the new owners. Hope is at a crossroads in her life: her boyfriend of several years has gone off to Las Vegas after they had a fight, and he’s made no move towards marriage or even a commitment to her.
Tru is drawn to everything Hope has to say and finds her to be a stunning beauty. They both are intensely attracted to each other and spend a beautiful and idyllic several days together. But will they stay together, or will Hope chose her old life and her boyfriend Josh? Will Tru abandon his home in Africa and come to America, for a woman he just met?
“He told himself he would have moved heaven and earth to go to her.”
Both Tru and Hope have enormous family obligations and yes, time passes and events separate them. But they never forgot that time they spent together in Sunset Beach. Nicholas Sparks is a fantastic writer, creating heartbreaking characters and events but without any false sentimentality. I LOVED this book and could not put it down!
Central to this story is the real-life “Kindred Spirit”, a mailbox on a lone beach in North Carolina where hundreds of people have placed letters about love, hope, despair…in the hopes that perhaps one day the intended recipient would see them. Or sometimes they are just letters that need to be written. I love the premise of this adult romance and I was hooked on Hope and Tru’s story from the very first page. Although this is at times a heartbreaking story, ‘Every Breath’ is ultimately filled with love and hope. I loved taking the journey with Hope and Tru and will treasure this book always.
“With us, I want to believe that anything will always be possible.”
(With thanks to the publisher for a review copy.)