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Get out your handkerchiefs — in keeping with Valentine’s Day, I’ve selected three of the most beautiful, achingly romantic, tear-jerking love stories I’ve ever read. Two of them were adapted into films and I think the third would make a good movie, too. Brew yourself a cup of tea, get a box of Kleenex and treat yourself to these three tales.
Somewhere in Time
Richard Matheson
Tor, 2008 reprint edition
The movie version of Somewhere in Time is one of my all-time favorites — it’s romantic and heart-wrenching and tragic all at the same time — and fans of the movie will absolutely adore the book, which has some interesting differences. It is the story of Richard Collier, a modern-day man dying of a brain tumor who decides to go on one last trip. He travels to a hotel in San Diego where he comes upon a photograph of Elise McKenna, a famous actress who performed there in the 1800s. Richard becomes rather obsessed with this photo and with Elise herself — he is convinced that somehow, some way, they were in love. So he travels back in time (work with me here, skeptics) to find her.
The Notebook
Nicholas Sparks
Warner Books, 2004
It’s 1932, and Noah and Allie, two teenagers in a small southern town, fall in love. The young lovers spend one summer together before life intervenes — Allie moves away with her parents, World War II breaks out — and soon more than a decade has passed since Allie and Noah have seen each other. On the eve of Allie’s wedding to a local lawyer, Noah returns to town to renovate an old house and the two meet again. Will she leave her fiancé for her first love? The story then skips ahead in time to when Noah, now in his 80s, resides in a nursing home where he reads from a notebook every day. This intensely, achingly romantic story will have you believing in the power of love.
The Wednesday Letters
Jason F. Wright
Berkley 2008
Jack and Laurel Cooper, the long-married proprietors of a bed and breakfast inn, die in each other’s arms one fateful night. Their three grown children come home for the funeral and during the course of making the arrangements for it, discover a series of letters that were written by Jack to Laurel every Wednesday of their married lives. The letters provide the children with insight into what a truly devoted marriage looks like — the ups, downs and everything in between. The letters contain the story of their parents’ lives, their love story, and a heartbreaking story of a secret they kept all of these years that might have devastated their marriage. This is a lovely, romantic tale that is at turns suspenseful, sad, heartwarming and funny.
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