By Robyn Rossit
Content warning: terminal illness
Nicholas Sparks has been an auto-buy author for me since my early teens when seeing the movie, A Walk to Remember, opened the door into his many works of romance. Being a reader at heart, I had to read the book and then continue through his backlist. Since then, I've purchased and read every new book, so it was no surprise that I picked up The Wish when it came out this past fall. The Wish is a dual-timeline story sharing Maggie's story at sixteen, in 1996, and her present-day story as an adult in 2019.
Sixteen-year-old Maggie's world has been flipped upside down, spending a year living with an aunt who is a stranger to her in a small remote town in North Carolina, away from her friends and family. She feels so lost and alone until she meets Bryce Trickett—one of the very few teenagers who lives on the island. He shows her how much there is to love about life on the island while also introducing her to photography and igniting a lifelong passion. Present-day Maggie is a successful travel photographer who runs a gallery in New York City while continuing to travel the world camera in hand. After receiving a life-altering medical diagnosis, she finds herself spending more time in New York City and the gallery. Her medical issues cause her to become more reliant on her young assistant, and therefore, grow closer to him. As Christmas approaches, she begins to tell him the story of the time she spent in North Carolina and the love that changed her life.
I really love when a book is a story within a story, and Sparks certainly delivers in The Wish. Alternating between the two timelines, I really couldn't decide which one I was enjoying more as both were captivating in their own way. In terms of romance, it was definitely more of a slow burn, but in the sweetest, teenage first love kind of way. It certainly reminded me of what drew me into Nicholas Sparks' storytelling to begin with.
Certainly, there are a lot of familiar Nicholas Sparks facets to the story—if you've read a couple, you always find a sense of familiarity among his work. While no two stories are exactly alike, he certainly enjoys certain plot devices. Different parts of the story reminded me of various past works of his which felt very comforting.