The Return by Nicholas Sparks (2020) Can hardly believe it......here comes a BQ first.....
We actually get to review a destined-for-bestsellerdom new book on the day its release.
We fully realize that nothing we say, pro or con, would affect the guaranteed massive sales of this book one way or the other.........
What the hell, as long we got our book-hungry fingers on an advanced copy of this, we might as well weigh in along with hundred of thousands of other reviewers, bloggers and God knows how many readers who'll post a review right after they finish reading it within the next couple of hours...........
Applying criticism to a Nicholas Sparks book is a little like critiquing a pizza from your favorite neighborhood pizza place........
You ordered it cause you like your neighborhood restaurant's pizza and you know it's going to satisfy you just like the dozens of other pizzas you ordered there........
Same pizza.......but maybe with different toppings.
So off we go to Sparks-land, where a damaged soul, a Navy doctor recovering from terrible wounds sustained in Afghanistan, retreats to a solitary location.......(in the reliable Sparksian kingdom of North Carolina).
True love finds him in the person of an impossibly beautiful woman working as a Sheriff's deputy........and mystery finds him in the person of a sullen, enigmatic teenage girl he attempts to befriend......(not to mention the added mystery of his beloved late grandfather's dying words...)
By now, if you know anything about Spark's long catalog of heartfelt, tearjerking novels, you've correctly guessed that the doctor's budding romance and the teen's backstory reveal wrenching, gut-punching tragedies........and lessons in the unyielding power of love and family ties......and a finale guaranteed to warm your soul like a comfy blanket on a cold winter night.
In other words........batten down the hatches, position the box of tissues nearby and prepare to tear up.......(or weep out loud, depending on how susceptible you are to having your heartstrings pulled by a virtuoso who plays on your emotions as if zipping though a Rachmaninoff concerto)
Not that we would ever succumb to such shameless manipulation......
Not that we'd ever admit it if we did.........
(Allright, the last third of the book did get to us a little.......we'll deny having said that if you breathe a word of it to anyone else.....)
(Oh, wait a sec......this is going out all over the world, isn't it.....)
Damn.
As long we've blown our secret that we're a sucker to stuff like "The Return",,,,,ah well.....might as well give it 4 stars (****).
Please forget we ever mentioned boxes of tissues.
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