Safe Haven

❝if you love someone set him free; if he comes back he is yours, if not you were not meant to be❞

If you have ever been in love, then I trust that you have already heard this saying. I, myself had used this a lot of times before and I think this is the best summary for the latest Nicholas Sparks novel.

I have been putting this novel on hold, even avoiding buying this for the longest time but when my favorite bookstore put the trade paperback version on sale, I just could not resist. Nicholas Sparks is one of my favorite author and I find his novels, at least those that I have read to be tear-jerkers in a good way. But  after reading a brief summary of Safe Haven, in one way or the other I somehow find this latest offering of his to be non-par with those previous novels he wrote.

Anyway, when I opened the novel to its first chapter, I was expecting to cry buckets of tears through my reading just like how almost all of his novels that I read made me. I was half-afraid that my hunch might be right about this novel and yet I am excited and intrigued of what Sparks has to offer me this time. I was worried that the "Sparks' magic touch" will not move me anymore. Well, when I started reading the first few pages of the novel, I was slowly yet surely being hooked. I find Katie sweet, and yet intriguing. And just like Jo, when I did not know about Kevin yet, I was afraid that she will suddenly betray and hurt Alex and the kids. When I got to the part of the novel where it introduced Kevin and his deeds, I cannot help but think of Enough. Enough is a movie starred by J. Lo, and Katie or rather Erin's story is similar to J. Lo's character's story.

All along, more than half way in the novel, when I realized that I haven't shed a single tear yet, I thought that I won't cry this time. That Nicholas Sparks has lost his magic on me. But as I read on to the living with Kevin part, especially to what he had done to the perfume ad in the magazine, I finally cried. Then as the story ends, though I did not cry buckets of tears, I felt it tug at my heart. I was touched by the power of love, love proving that it is the most powerful of all. That a person who loves truly will do everything in her power and even beyond it to take care of her loved one. My heart also goes out to the friendship that has formed only to end the way it did. But for the most part, Safe Haven proved to me that if you really love someone, you will do everything to make him happy even if it meant letting him love and be loved by someone else.