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The Longest Ride, by Nicholas Sparks, was not (and this is
going to sound pretty harsh) the piece of crap I expected it to be. I was fully
expecting to hate him all over again, with a renewed and stronger hatred than I
had felt before, but I was not. This story takes us back and forth between two
very different, yet oddly similar relationships, through two very different
time periods. As always, when I actually like a book, it’s hard for me to give
too much of a summary, because I feel like I’ll give it away. The fact that I am
telling you I didn’t hate it, is spoiler enough. In this story we find Ira, who
is 91 and has been in a terrible car accident, he’s on the side of the road,
covered in injuries, in a vehicle that is upside down in the snow. His long
deceased wife’s ghost is what comforts him in that time, keeps him conscious,
and takes him back through their life together, and apart. Flash forward to
Luke and Sophia and the start of their relationship. They have quite a few
trials to go through (Luke could die at any point in this book, and with Sparks
as the author is practically inevitable), and much to overcome, not least of
all including what they’re going to do when he can’t pay for the ranch, and she
can’t find a job after graduation. If you’ve seen the movie trailer (the only
reason I ended up reading this book in the first place), you know that Sophia
and Luke are the ones who find Ira.
I’m giving this book a 4. There was one part in this book
that made me extremely angry (like rant to my fiancé and friend angry). It was
when Ira was in the war and he was talking about the two people he was closest
with there. I really felt like the names Sparks’ used were lazily picked. I
know those names, and what and where they’re from, and I just didn’t feel like
it was okay. Other than that, I loved how the two relationships intertwined in
the end. It did make me cry a little when they got to the part where Ruth died
(it’s not really a spoiler), but the love stories were beautiful. As much as I may
really hate just about everything Nicholas Sparks does, he has a way of making
you fall in love with characters fast and hard. This book was obviously written
well, he’s been doing it long enough that he knows what he’s doing, but it was
the stories within stories within stories that really made this book what it
was. Hopefully the movie does it justice, I’m not sure it’ll be able to capture
the magic in this book, but I guess I’ll probably find out (many apologies to
my fiancé, who I will probably drag with me).
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