April 17, 2015

Book Review: The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks

The Longest Ride
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Get a copy here!
AMAZON | BOOK DEPOSITORY


One, two, three...


Everyone, raise and clap!


“If there is a heaven, we will find each other again, for there is no heaven without you.”
(Ira Levinson; Ch. XXX, The Longest Ride)
Excuse me while I do this…


There are times when I don’t know what to put on my review because I’m afraid that my lame words would ruin the perfectness of the book. Today is one of them. Nicholas Sparks is by all odds my favorite author forever. Even though I hated him most of the time for the ‘heartless’ ending on several of his books, I could never deny my undying love for his every epic writing. No need to say more about him because we all know very well that Nicholas Sparks and love story have a really tight bound that it’s impossible sometimes to talk about romance without mentioning his name.
I watched the trailer of The Longest Ride movie and had a moment of ‘hysterically fangirling’ for a couple of good minutes (over the guy who plays Luke) before I determined to read the book first before heading to the cinema to watch it. I was anxious as hell to read it at first as I was scared that Mr. Sparks would break my heart into pieces again through this book. But holy God, this is seriously, once again, SERIOUSLY the most beautiful romance book I’ve ever read in the entire 22 years of my life.
The Longest Ride reminded me why I fell in love with all Nicholas Sparks’ books in the first place. As the cover said, featuring two couples, two love stories bounded in one epic tale, this book had a perfectly-built plot, lots of gasping-for-air circumstances, tons of heart-melting moments, and a couple of shocking-to-the-bone scenes. At first I thought I’d be drown to Luke and Sophia’s story more but turned out Ira and Ruth’s were so damn beautiful as well, even more beautiful in fact. Each couple had their own charms, each stories had their own beautifulness, and fate threaded them in a most astonishing way that made the readers believed that there was a continuance there.
“I understand that love and tragedy go hand in hand, for there can’t be one without the other, but nonetheless I find myself wondering whether the trade-off is fair.”
(Ira Levinson; Ch. XVII, The Longest Ride)
During my reading the book, my heart broke and crushed in pieces thousand times (especially when reading Ira and Ruth’s part) then healed itself only to be wrecked in millions even more tiny pieces.


I’m always a believer of everlasting love, so reading Ira and Ruth’s story just made me believe in more of those. I loved it so much the way Mr. Sparks delivered their story through reminiscent conversations of Ruth and Ira. Even after years, the way they talked about it was thick with sincere love and true affection between them both. God knows how much I want that kind of love in my life…
“You kissed me, yes, but it was not just good night. Even then, I could feel the promise in it, the promise that you would kiss me just like that, forever.”
(Ruth Levinson; Ch. V, The Longest Ride)
You got me, Ruth...
“If we’d never met, I think I would have known that my life wasn’t complete. And I would have wandered the world in search of you, even if I didn’t know who I was looking for.”
(Ira Levinson; Ch. XXVIII, The Longest Ride)



Awwwwwwwwwwww


While Mr. Sparks successfully drowned me in the sea of love and tears, he also successfully surprised me again and again near the ending. I thought I somehow figured it out. Yes, the ending was just like what I guessed from the beginning, but NEVER ONCE, really, NEVER ONCE I THOUGHT IT WOULD HAPPENED THAT WAY. I literally dropped my jaw and had a trouble putting it back up before closing my reader for a while to distract my thought.
I had no complaints whatsoever about this book.
The Longest Ride is perfection.
Beau ideal.
The best masterpiece of Nicholas Sparks.
If people ask me what book romance to read, I will always recommend The Longest Ride for them to read before listing the other favorites of mine.
Now, with no doubt, I’ll go watch the movie. Hopefully it’ll be as beautiful as the book. After all, all Nicholas Sparks’ did ;)


Love, read, and review,
Cynthia D.

0 comments:

Post a Comment