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Swept off your feet and into a nightmare... A powerful blend of love story, betrayal and obsession, The Guardian is written with electrifying intensity, playing with your emotions at every turn. Widowed at a young age, Julie understands the pain that comes with love and has avoided romance for a long time. As she eases herself back into the dating scene, her eye is caught by the darkly sophisticated Richard, as he begins a passionate pursuit of her affections. But she is still confused by her feelings for best friend Mike: funny, loyal, but definitely not sophisticated. A seemingly innocent choice sets off a deadly chain of events that leaves Julie fighting for her life, as jealousy simmers into murderous desire.

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Sparks Du bist nie allein

Knihu som ešte nezačala čítať, cez prázdniny sa venujem vnúčatám. Po prázdninách
sa s chuťou pustím do čítania

One to remember

Tento příspěvek prozrazuje důležité momenty děje, proto je skrytý, abychom vám nepokazili zážitek ze čtení.
I really don’t know how to begin as in the past, I used to write a lot, but now it really has been a while…this year, however, I decided to start again...with something small and then I would see how it goes. So, since I love to read, I decided to write a book review from every book that I’ve read this year so far. The first book that I’ve read this year is The Guardian. It is a book written by Nicholas Sparks. I have to say that I am a huge fan of him and I am planning to read every book that he writes. Not because I like romantic stories so much, but because each of his stories that I’ve read so far, has something original in it. Something that I will remember. Since it’s already been a couple of years that he is active as author and since I studied Literature, I would love to compare all his works. I always feel hypocritical when I am judging an author (especially one with so many books published) since I’ve only published a couple of newspaper’s articles so far, but nevertheless, I enjoy doing it. Sometimes it really takes more pairs of eyes to see some things in books. And I really enjoy comparing my opinion with other ones. So, let’s get this over with and get to the point.
Before I read The Guardian, I read The Notebook, A walk to remember, The Rescue, A Bend in the Road, Nights in Rodanthe, The Lucky One, The Longest Ride and Two by Two. A walk to remember will be most probably my favorite book from all Sparks’ books forever as it was also the first movie that has ever made me cry. Then out of these, The Rescue and A Bend in the Road surprised me really in a positive way since these works are not so well known (no movie made, etc.), but are really great (especially The Rescue).
But back to The Guardian. It is basically a story about three people: Julie, Richard and Mike. The way the book begins is very nice. Julie is a widow at the age of 25 and as Christmas present, she is given a dog from her already dead husband who arranged it while he was still alive. Four years later, she is ready for a serious relationship and starts dating, but the dating pool is not really big. She meets loser after loser until she meets mysterious Richard. Richard is a gentleman, treats her like a queen and very soon she is in love with him, because he is different than the others. The problem is that soon enough, he begins to behave in a really possessive way, which is both weird and scary at the same time. Already at this stage, the reader knows that something bad is going to happen, he just doesn’t know what exactly.
On the other side of the story, there is Mike, the best friend of Julie’s dead husband and also a very good friend of hers. What I like about Sparks’ way of describing him is keeping it simple. It is probably not very nice to call somebody “simple”, but Mike is a really a simple person, if you know what I mean. Apart from being very handy at everything and totally in love with Julie, he is friendly and super easy going. But that’s it about him. There is really nothing super original about him, which is the reason why he never made Julie to think about him in any other way than as her friend. For some reason, women are attracted to mysterious men with whom they are not bored and cannot predict their behavior, even though they are not so special themselves. To be totally honest, Julie is also just a simple hairdresser with bad childhood who was pulled off the street by her dead husband who practically gave her a job and home (nice aspect of the story, however, I don’t think something like that can happen in real life).
But back to Richard. Maybe some readers might think that such person is really hard to find, but I tell you that there is not. Unfortunately, I have some experience with stalkers myself and there is really lots of them. Okay, not all of them are murderers, but still…I believed this story. I knew why Richard (with his good looks and being super clever) out of all women opted for Julie. Not only she reminded him of his deceased wife, but she was simple. Remember when I said that women like mysterious men with interesting personalities that don’t make them feel bored? Well, men like it simpler…regarding relationships, all they want in a woman is that she does not make their life complicated. And that is practically it. If she is good looking as well, the choice is more or less made. Yet, there is problem. As Richard has his own scars and is not mentally quite well, he becomes obsessive about Julie. And here is where the scary parts begin…Julie realizes soon enough that there is something wrong him and when they break up, she starts to meet him “by accident” at all possible places. That’s when she falls is love with Mike…or realizes that she better keeps it simple as well. Mike is something like safe haven for her. It is a person she knows, can trust on 100 % and who will love her unconditionally. Women never opt for guys like Mike unless there is some drama around it, so this is also actually a believable part of the story as well (that she gave him a chance only after it didn’t work out with Richard).
So, there is actually a nice contrast. Both Mike and Julie are really easy going and simple personalities with no special scars and personal issues with Richard, on the other side, who really is something. A maniac with changed identity (liked that part as well) who just wants a happy life with a woman next to him, whom he could control of course. To be honest, I liked how Sparks played with Richard’s personality. It was nice we could read what he was thinking and try to understand the way his brain worked. He was super clever and the way he could manipulate with Julie a women in general was amazing!
The story doesn’t have a super happy ending, but in a way, it ends positively. Good wins over bad. To sum it up, it is a nice story. Not the best of Sparks’ ones, but definitely one to remember. It is not every day that Sparks writes about serial murderers. As said, I really liked the contrast between Richard’s and the characters of Mike and Julie the most. I somehow believe that the characters themselves are more interesting than the story itself, but this is just my opinion. Maybe it would be nice to make a movie out of it, something scary. I think many of Sparks’ readers would watch it and be surprised. Three stars out of five from me.

Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Charles Sparks (* 31. prosince 1965, Omaha, Nebraska, USA) je jeden z nejúspěšnějších amerických spisovatelů současnosti. Jedná se o autora řady celosvětové úspěšných románů, z nichž 8 bylo použito jako předloha k neméně úspěšným filmům, devátý právě přichází do kin. V jeho díle zaujímají významné místo témata jako je křesťanství, láska, tragédie a osud. Do dnešního dne vydal 18 románů, které mají často romantickou formu a hlavní postavy se v nich obvykle nedočkají happy endu v běžném slova smyslu. Svůj první, nikdy nepublikovaný román, The Passing, napsal v roce 1985, během studia na Notre Dame. Druhý román, The Royal Murders, (rovněž nikdy nepublikovaný) napsal v roce 1989. V roce 1994 napsal další román The Notebook. Ten zaujal literární agentku Theresu Park, která zařídila jeho vydání v Time Warner Book Group. Vyšel v říjnu 1996 a zaznamenal obrovský úspěch - první týden vedl žebříček bestsellerů New York Times, úspěch se dostavil i na mezinárodní scéně. Jeho první román jej finančně dokonale zabezpečil, poté se oddal literární tvorbě a sepsal řadu dalších, mezinárodně velmi úspěšných bestsellerů. Jeho dílo bylo přeloženo do více než 35 jazyků, včetně češtiny (viz seznam publikovaných prací). Na námět osmi jeho románů byly vytvořeny celovečerní filmy, které dohromady vydělaly více než čtvrt miliardy dolarů.

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