The Wish
By Nicholas Sparks
5 stars
Nicholas Sparks books are a comfort read for me, he writes some of the most beautiful, heart wrenching and heartwarming stories ever. The premise for this book was vague but I honestly didn’t need to know more to be interested. I was very intrigued to see what a Nicholas Sparks book that is not set in a small town would look like and I was not disappointed. The Wish became one of my favorite books by this author.
In 1996 Maggie Dawes was sent to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind . . . until she meets Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island. By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer. She splits her time between running a successful gallery in New York and photographing remote locations around the world. But this year she is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis. Increasingly dependent on a young assistant, she finds herself becoming close to him.
This book was beautiful, it is told in dual timeline and I fell in love with the story. The 1996 timeline is innocent and hard to read because you know how much Maggie is struggling with fitting in in a new place. The 2019 timeline is raw and crude and we follow Maggie through a hard medical diagnosis that makes it so much harder to read about. The writing style is simple yet wonderful. Nicholas Sparks has a fantastic way of describing everyday things and making them sound perfect, like a nice cup of tea.
The characters are what make this book outstanding, we first have Maggie, who is such a flawed character you can´t end up but rooting for her. My favorite part of the book was reading about her telling her story to Mark, it was so wholesome. We then have Mark, a new employee at Maggie´s gallery who is trying to prove he is perfect for the job. Mark was honestly my favorite character, he is sweet, funny and considerate. The friendship formed by Maggie and Mark is what took this book to a whole new level for me. Finally we have Bryce, one of my new favorite characters of all time, Bryce was absolutely everything for me in this book. Bryce is kind, hardworking and extremely smart, I adored reading about his family dynamics and how nice he was to Maggie in 1996. The secondary characters are fantastic as well, they have a backstory and are well developed, they add depth to the story and by far the best secondary character was Maggie´s aunt.
The plot of this book is slow, Maggie tells us a story from years ago that is simply slice of life, not much happens in this book but I don’t care. The slow pace worked perfectly in this story and it made the twists and specially the ending that much more powerful. This book absolutely destroyed me, by the end, when all the twist have been reveled and we understood how this story ended I just simple couldn’t stop crying. Once again Nicholas Sparks managed to have be in tears by the end of the story.
Overall, The Wish is an outstanding novel about love, loss, acceptance and following your dreams. I’m so happy I read this book and if you like romance novels that are heart wrenching and heartwarming at the same time I would definitely recommend you give this one a go.
