The Longest Ride Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Sparks is author of seventeen New York Times Bestsellers, including his most recent, The Longest Ride. His seventeen novels have sold over 97 million copies worldwide. 65 million of those copies were sold in the United States and they have been printed in over 50 different languages across the globe. Sparks’ first novel was The Notebook which was published in 1996. His tenth and latest movie adaptation was of The Longest Ride. His other movie adaptations include The Best of Me (2014), Safe Haven (2013), The Lucky One, The Last Song, Dear John, A Walk to Remember, Message in a Bottle, The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe and work in progress, The Choice (2016). Together, his movie adaptations have earned over $275 million dollars. Sparks lives in North Carolina with his wife and their three sons and two daughters.

The Longest Ride follows the stories of two couples, Ira and Ruth an elderly c

ouple and Sophia and Luke a young college aged couple. Ira Levinson is in a car accident stuck in an embankment in the snow. He is ninety one years old and having suffered multiple injuries is trapped in his car unable to move. While trapped, he imagines his wife Ruth, who died nine years prior, in the car with him and they remember their life together. Ruth tries to help Ira hang on while they recount how they met, their elaborate painting collections, World War II and how it affected their lives. Although Ira knows Ruth is not actually in the car with him, her words and the memories of their marriage help to keep him alive.

Sophia Danko, a Wake Forest College senior, meets Luke, a young cowboy unlike any guy she has ever met. Luke, a bull rider, shows Sophia a whole new world where she sees how high the stakes can be in Luke’s world between survival and success and ruin and reward. As the two fall in love, Sophia imagines her life with Luke, much different than any she could have imagined, but only if Luke’s secrets don’t derail their relationship. In the end, these two couples lives, with so little in common, come together in a way that none of them could have expected.

The Longest Ride is a touching story about true, lasting love and it helps readers remember what is important in life. Sparks makes his characters easy to fall in love with and get to know because of the way he writes from different characters points of view. Overall, The Longest Ride is a great story by one of my favorite authors.