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At First Sight

Hardback cover of At First Sight
Author	Nicholas Sparks
Language	English
Genre	Romance, Tragedy
Publisher	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date	October 18, 2005
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	288 pages
Preceded by	The Lucky one

At First Sight is a romance novel by Nicholas Sparks, written in 2005. Set in North Carolina, USA, at First Sight is the sequel to Sparks’ previous book, True Believer, written in the same year. At First Sight came to be as a result of a 45 page epilogue in True Believer. Sparks’ editor thought this was too long for an epilogue, and damaged the effect of True Believer. It was then that Sparks got the idea to write At First Sight as its predecessor.

Plot

Where At First Sight begins its story is after Jeremy’s proposal. The books setting begins in New York City as Lexi and Jeremy are preparing to move Jeremy to their future home, Boone Creek. Lexi is making Jeremy keep the baby a secret from his family and friends and the residents of Boone Creek until after the wedding, because she doesn’t want people to get the wrong impression of why he and Lexi have decided to get married after only a few weeks of knowing each other. The only people that know of the pregnancy are Jeremy’s long time best friend Alvin, and Lexis grandmother, Doris.

When Jeremy and Lexi return to Boone Creek, Jeremy finds himself unable to find the inspiration to write any new columns for his magazine. This adds to the stress of buying a new house for his new family and having a child on the way. Dorris tries to help Jeremy with this problem by giving him her book. Dorris is the town psychic and has the specialty of predicting the sex of a newborn baby, and records it all in her book. Dorris suggests that Jeremy try to write about the journal for a new column.

Trouble In Paradise

Rodney is a character featured in True Believer as a longtime friend of Lexi that has been after her for years until Jeremy came along. By the end of the previous novel he starts to be interested in he and Lexis other longtime friend, Rachel. By this book they are an established couple, who have been having problems in their relationship. Rachel feels as though Rodney is still not over Lexi, and would be with her if she weren’t marrying Jeremy. One day Jeremy finds Lexi sitting alone with Rodney talking and holding hands. He immediately feels this is suspicious but tries to tell himself that it was nothing and he was simply making it into something it wasn’t, even if Rodney had been after Lexi for years. Jeremy later confronts Lexi about what she had done that day, in which case she fails to mention anything about seeing Rodney that day. Jeremy receives an anonymous email saying only “how do you know the baby is yours?” This paired with his supposed inability to conceive leaves Jeremy with his mind racing, suspecting it may have been someone else’s, Rodney’s in particular, but once again reminding himself that Lexi wasn’t capable of such a thing and that nothing had ever become of her and Rodney, and he decides to not tell Lexi.

Rachel Leaves

Sometime later, Rachel runs off for a few days without telling anyone, leaving Rodney Dorris and Lexi all feeling worried. Lexi cancels her dinner plans with Jeremy and says she is going over to Dorris’ house to talk and comfort her, but when Jeremy checks up on her he finds her car at Rodney’s instead. Feeling angry that Lexi had once again lied went to her house and waited outside for her to get back. When she returns he confronts her about Rodney and Lexi explains that she went over to her grandmothers like she said and then decided to console Rodney. They have a heated argument and Jeremy goes back to the local motel where he had been staying.

The Second Email

When he gets back, Jeremy receives a second anonymous email, this time saying “she hasn’t told you yet? It’s in Dorris’ book.” Moments later, Lexi shows up crying and the two end up working things out. Jeremy still does not tell Lexi about the emails, not yet knowing what to say or make of them. Jeremy searches for what the email might be referring to, and after numerous times going through and analyzing the book, he finds it; a prediction from 4 years earlier of a miscarriage with Lexis initials and the name of the father. Jeremy is angered that Lexi had never told him of this and feels she has lied to him for the third time. The two end up in an even more heated argument after closing on their new house, and this time when Jeremy leaves he’s heading back to New York City for his bachelor party. There he discovers the sender of the anonymous emails was his best friend, Alvin who doesn’t want the couple to get married after such a short period of time. Jeremy learns that when Rachel ran away, she had gone to New York City and visited Alvin, who she had met in the previous novel, and spilled the secret about Lexis’ previous miscarriage and the documentation of it in the journal, and that’s how Alvin knew of it. Jeremy is furious telling Alvin he never wants to hear from him again, and gets the next flight back to Boone creek.

When Jeremy returns, he and Lexi have a long talk and both admit that they were both wrong, and Jeremy fills her in on the emails, Alvin, and Rachel. Everything is explained from then that the baby was in fact, despite the odds, definitely Jeremy’s’ and that there was nothing between Lexi and Rodney. Rachel avoids Lexi and Dorris for a short time until finally coming to Lexis house, apologizing and explaining how she accidently told Alvin about the pregnancy and they make up. They have a wonderful wedding a short time later where Lexis deceased parents were married.

The Baby

When Jeremy and Lexi go to their ultrasound appointment, they learn that an amniotic band threatened their baby with possible deformities if it were to attach, or even its life. Jeremy and Lexi spend the last ten weeks of her pregnancy in fear and distress over the news. Lexi tells Jeremy that they can move to New York for Jeremy, in hopes of Jeremy finding inspiration to write again. Jeremy briefly thinks on this offer and quickly turns down her offer. Moments later, Jeremy finds inspiration to write his next column and his writing rut was over.

Lexi wakes Jeremy up early in the morning to inform him that she was in labor. With this news Jeremy freaks out like any expecting father and was a mess for the whole experience. Lexi successfully delivers their daughter, Claire, named after Lexis deceased mother; however Lexi dies immediately after giving birth, leaving her grandmother Doris and Jeremy in anguish and Jeremy, a widowed parent.

Epilogue

In the epilogue, Claire is now 4 and Jeremy as adjusted with life without Lexi. Claire has been having nightmares for a few weeks several times every night, like Lexi had when she was young after her parents had died. Jeremy takes her to a very special place for Jeremy and Lexi, the cemetery where Lexi and her parents had been buried, where a phenomenon occurs around midnight on foggy nights. After this Claire no longer has nightmares after seeing this phenomenon exactly like her mother had.

True Believer(prequel)

At First Sight starts its story off, where True Believer left off, but skips a little in between the two books. True Believer introduces the romance between New York City resident, Jeremy Marsh and Boone Creek resident, Lexi Darnell. In the first novel, Jeremy is a writer that goes to a small town in North Carolina, Boone Creek, to chase a story. There he meets Lexi, the town librarian. Jeremy is charmed by Lexi and the two end up falling in love. Jeremy went through a divorce a few years before mainly due to his inability to conceive children, but the book ends with Lexi holding her stomach asking Jeremy if he “believed in miracles” and that her psychic grandmother, Dorris, predicted it was a girl; she was pregnant with his child. The part that the books fill you in on is that since where True Believer had left the readers, Jeremy had since proposed after a very brief dating period.

Reviews

Almost all editorial reviews on the novel share similar thoughts on the book. In general, they all suggest readers to have plenty of tissues at hand upon reading this, as would I. Most agree that it is a moving and overall good story. Publishers Weekly describe the ending as “majorly manipulative and totally effective.” John M. Formy-Duval from about.com, shares his opinion of the novel being a cliché.They all cannot escape the fact that, cliché or not the book has amazing qualities and has become another one of Sparks’ best sellers.

Nicholas Sparks and his works

Sparks’ has 4 children, Miles, Ryan, Landon and twin daughters, Lexie and Savannah. All of his children have shared their names with one of Sparks’ characters in his novels; Miles and Ryan are characters names in Sparks’ A Bend in the Road, Landon is the main character from A Walk to Remember, Savanah is one of the main characters in Dear John, and Lexi of course is a main character in True Believer and At First Sight. Sparks’ admits to getting emotional and even crying when writing his famous novels, and gets his inspiration from numerous unexpected places.

Message in a Bottle (1999), A Walk to Remember (2002), The Notebook (2004), Nights in Rodanthe (2008), Dear John (2010), and The Last Song (2010) are Sparks’ 6 works that have been made into film adaptations. More are in the works and are set to be released, the earliest being The Lucky One coming in April 2012. All Nicholas Sparks books have become best sellers thanks to his writing and legion of fans.