The Chance | Review

My thoughts:
I enjoyed this book very much.  The story line is not one you see often, two young people seperated as teenagers, who still are in love with each other eleven years later. But life intervenes.  Things happen, things that one of them doesn't want the other to know about, because they don't want pitied.
This was one of those books  you just don't want to put down until your finished reading the whole thing.  That was exactly how I read the book, in one sitting.  I found this book to be a wonderful story of redemption.  Even when the characters of the book messed up BIG time, God took the broken lives and restored it. It took a long time to happen, but it did happen.  My tear meter (the measure of a book making me cry) was flowing freely.  I cried buckets as I read this book, which means it is a great book!  I love to cry while reading, it means the author has touched my emotions with their story.  Great book!  4.5 stars.
This book was provided for review purposes only.  The opinions expressed are my own honest feelings and review of this book.


About the Book:

The Chance

By Karen Kingsbury

Synopsis:

It's never too late for those willing to take a chance.

It was a crazy idea, but years ago, the day before fifteen-year-old Ellie Tucker moved from Savannah, Georgia to San Diego, California, she and her best friend Nolan Cook sat beneath an ancient oak tree dripping with Spanish moss and wrote letters to each other. Letters they sealed and slipped into a rusty, old metal box. The plan was to return eleven years later and read them in the year 2013, the year Nolan's time traveling books say everything is supposed to make sense and the mysteries of the world will be understood.

That summer, if there was one thing Ellie wanted more than anything, it was for all the world to make sense. Ellie’s mama had slept with another man, and now her family and her life were falling apart. Ellie was moving to San Diego because of it. Just her daddy and her.

The years that followed were slow and painful, a gradual dying off of Ellie’s dreams and an abandonment of the faith that once warmed their home. Now it is almost 2013. Ellie is a single mom living in a tired apartment. Sometimes, when Ellie’s precious daughter is asleep, she watches ESPN’s Sports Center for a glimpse of the guy she left behind. The boy she thought she’d spend the rest of her life with. Her friend and NBA standout, Nolan Cook.

Meanwhile, Nolan has suffered some tragedy of his own, tragedy Ellie knows nothing about. Shortly after Ellie's departure, Nolan’s father and coach succumbs to a heart attack. Drowning in an ocean of grief and loss, Nolan filled the lonely hours talking to God and playing basketball. As many games in a week as he could. No one was surprised when he received a scholarship from Georgia Tech and later was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks during his senior year of college.

The NBA is good for Nolan. He has a platform to share his faith, and he signs an endorsement deal with a major sports equipment company. Still, he is alone. He thinks about Ellie, about the innocence of those days and the letters they wrote. He dates on occasion, but nothing sticks. He wishes he could connect with Ellie once more and catch up, but he’s tried and found nothing. Maybe for that reason, he is more aware of the approaching date and the letters and the knowledge that when that day arrives he can only be in one place.

For both Ellie and Nolan, the coming date is more than just a childhood promise. It's the chance to make sense of it all, the chance to find out if it's ever too late for love.

About the Author:#1 New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury is America's favorite inspirational novelist, with over 20 million copies of her award-winning books in print. Karen has written more than 50 novels, ten of which have hit #1 on national lists.  She lives in Tennessee with her husband, Don, and their five sons, three of whom are adopted from Haiti. Their daughter Kelsey is married to Christian artist Kyle Kupecky.