Message in a Bottle

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 336 pages
• Published by: Grand Central Publishing
• Edition: 1st Edition edition April 1, 1998
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0446523569
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0446523561
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Product Review
If you thought The Notebook was a tearjerker, get out the hankies, pull up a chair, and get ready to have your heart monkey-wrenched by Nicholas Sparks's second star-crossed love story, Message in a Bottle. When Theresa Osborne takes a much-needed summer holiday at Cape Cod, she finds a lot more than a break from the hustle and bustle. On an early-morning jog along Cape Cod Bay, she comes across a corked bottle with a scrolled-up message inside that reads, "My Dearest Catherine, I miss you, my darling, as I always do, but today is especially hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together" It bobbles around in the same vein for several more paragraphs and ends with "am alone on the pier and I do not care what others think as I bow my head and cry and cry and cry. Garret."

Garret may eat quiche, but no bother--before you can say "Look! I found two more letters!" Theresa is hot on his trail and determined to find this mysterious yet sensitive message-in-a-bottle man. She finds him at a sleepy North Carolina port, working on his beloved sailboat, The Happenstance. From there, a romance buds and blossoms into a colorful bouquet of emotional baggage. Theresa has problems with her past--or, more accurately, her past is a problem. She is so scarred from her "I'm a super churchgoing guy now that I've run out on my wife" ex-husband that she hasn't tried to date since her divorce some three or four years before. And who is Catherine? And what's Garret's bag, anyway? When Theresa finds out, she plunges to the depths of her soul and uncorks a whopper of a secret about herself, bringing Garret to terms with who he really is.

Message in a Bottle has the earmarks of sentimental tongue-wagging at its finest and should please romantics and cynics alike--it's sure to bring romantics to their knees, while cynics will be slapping theirs in laughter. --Rebekah Warren

From Publishers Weekly
Avoiding a sophomore slump, Sparks follows The Notebook with another sentimental candidate for the bestseller lists. Boston parenting columnist Theresa Osborne has lost faith in the dream of everlasting love. Three years after divorcing her cheating husband, the single mother is vacationing on Cape Cod when she finds a bottle washed up on the shore. Inside, a message begins: "My Dearest Catherine, I miss you." Subsequent publication of the poignant missive in her column turns up two more letters, found by others, from the same mysterious writer, Garrett Blake. Piqued by his epistolary constancy, Theresa follows the trail to North Carolina, where she discovers that Garrett has been mourning his late wife for three years; writing the sea-borne messages is his only solace. Theresa also finds that Garrett just might be ready to love again and that she might be the lady for him. There are few surprises here as we watch the couple learn to love in Catherine's slowly waning shadow. By the time they do, Sparks has proved that a man who romantically (and manually) pens missives to his lost lady love in the era of e-mail is a welcome hero in this fin-de-millennium fax-happy world. (Knowing that Kevin Costner has been slated to play Garrett on screen doesn't hurt, either.) Film rights to Warner Bros.; simultaneous Time Warner audio; Literary Guild main selection and Reader's Digest select edition; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Message in a Bottle (Mass Market Paperback) Message in a Bottle is a unique romantic story and a fine novel. It all starts when Theresa Osborne is vacationing in Cape Code and comes across - you guessed it - a message in a bottle. The message is from a man "Garrett" to his wife about his intensely felt love. Osborne, a middle aged divorcee with little romance in her own life is intrigued enough to start searching out others who may have found similar messages. As she collects them, she herself falls in love with Garrett (although she has yet to admit it to herself) and decides to search for him. She finds him in a small, North Carolina town and the romance emerges. But of course - they are such different people that problems crop up. He is a widower feeling guilty and not over his wife and a small town kind of guy. She's a big city gal with a career. But the relationship develops with ups and downs nonetheless. Sparks is excellent in fully developing the personalities of his characters and building empathy in the reader. He has done a fine job here. If you didn't like the movie - read the book anyway. It's much better.