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True Believer Mass Market Paperback – March 1, 2007


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Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 465 pages
  • Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; Reissue edition (March 1, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0446618152
  • ISBN-13: 978-0446618151
  • Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (459 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,706 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Charming, divorced Jeremy Marsh is a rising star. As a dashing, successful 37-year-old Manhattan science journalist, his skeptical scrutiny of ineffective antidepressants, cults and television clairvoyants has caught the eye of North Carolina restaurant owner Doris McClellan, who invites Jeremy to bucolic Boone Creek to scoop the story of eerie mystery lights appearing in an ancient cemetery. A diviner who can predict the sex of unborn babies, Doris suspects the lights are a ghostly curse. Her beautiful librarian granddaughter, Lexie Darnell, makes a lovely, if guarded, tour guide as Jeremy revs up his electromagnetic equipment for the ghost hunt. After witnessing the ethereal graveside lights, both grow closer, much to the chagrin of local deputy Rodney Hopper, who wants Lexie for himself. Guided by sage Doris and manipulated by meddling mayor Tom Gherkin, big-city Jeremy and smalltown Lexie find that trepidation about their differences somehow manages to bloom into love. Jeremy eventually uncovers the hidden truth behind the glowing graveyard fog and departs the lush gothic environs for New York. Can love bridge the gap? Sparks (The Wedding) delivers another shrink-wrapped, reliably uncomplicated romantic confection that's light as air, smooth as silk and gloriously sweet. Agent, Theresa Park. (One-day laydown Apr. 12)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

New York skeptic Jeremy Marsh makes his living exposing frauds in the articles he writes for Scientific American. His latest target is a famous psychic who claims to speak to the dead. The acclaim he receives for his expose places Jeremy in the public eye with an appearance on national television. Jeremy then travels to Boone Creek, North Carolina, to search for the truth behind the mysterious lights that appear in the local cemetery. The legend is that an old curse causes the spirits to wander, and now the town wants to capitalize on the phenomena to bring in badly needed tourist dollars. But Doris McClellan, the local psychic, wants the lights debunked, and asks Jeremy to investigate. What Jeremy doesn't count on is falling for Doris' granddaughter, Lexie, the town librarian. Lexie has had enough of smooth-talking city men, and shields her heart, but Jeremy keeps trying to penetrate her tough shell. Lexie never wants to leave Boone Creek, and she believes that Jeremy will never want to stay. Although Sparks' latest starts with great potential, the main characters feel cool and distant; it is the secondary characters who embody the warmth and verve that usually mark Sparks' best-sellers. Patty Engelmann
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

More About the Author

Nicholas Sparks is one of the world's most beloved storytellers. All of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, with over 97 million copies sold worldwide, in more than 50 languages, including over 65 million copies in the United States alone.

Sparks wrote one of his best-known stories, The Notebook, over a period of six months at age 28. It was published in 1996 by Warner Books. He followed with the novels Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999), The Rescue (2000), A Bend in the Road (2001), Nights in Rodanthe (2002), The Guardian (2003), The Wedding (2003), True Believer (2005) and its sequel, At First Sight (2005), Dear John (2006), The Choice (2007), The Lucky One (2008), The Last Song (2009), Safe Haven (2010) and The Best of Me (2011), as well as the 2004 non-fiction memoir Three Weeks With My Brother, co-written with his brother Micah. His seventeenth novel, The Longest Ride, was published on September 17, 2013.

Safe Haven, Sparks's eighth film adaptation and on which he served as a Producer, opened February 14, 2013, taking top box office honors for Valentine's Day. The ninth film adaptation of one of his novels, The Best of Me, will open in October and the tenth, The Longest Ride, will open next spring. Along with The Lucky One, Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John and The Last Song, adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels have a cumulative worldwide gross of over three-quarters of a billion dollars.

In 2012, Sparks and his publishing agent and creative partner Theresa Park, launched Nicholas Sparks Productions, with Park as President of Production. A film and television production company, they inked a two-year, first-look, non-writing, Executive Producer deal at Warner Horizon. Just four months later, Nicholas Sparks Productions announced the first three television series to be developed under that agreement, in collaboration with three different networks: TNT, ABC Family and Lifetime. NSP recently announced the acquisition of Gayle Sayers's life and memoir rights for a feature film to be co-produced with Michael Costigan. Nicholas Sparks Productions, in association with Senator Films, anticipate moving forward with a local language feature film for the German speaking audience in the near term.

Deliverance Creek, which marks Sparks's television producing debut, will premiere as a special two-hour movie on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2014 on Lifetime. With an original script written by Melissa Carter, directed by Jon Amiel, Deliverance Creek stars Lauren Ambrose. From Nicholas Sparks Productions and Warner Horizon, Melissa Carter, Nicholas Sparks, Theresa Park and Jon Amiel are Executive Producers on the telefilm.

Sparks lives in North Carolina with his family. He contributes to a variety of local and national charities, and is a major contributor to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame, where he provides scholarships, internships, and a fellowship annually. Along with his wife, he founded The Epiphany School in New Bern, North Carolina. As a former full scholarship athlete (he still holds a track and field record at the University of Notre Dame) he also spent four years coaching track and field athletes at the local public high school. In 2009, the team he coached at New Bern High School set a World Junior Indoor Record in the 4 x400 meter, in New York. The record still stands.

In 2011, Nicholas and his wife launched the Nicholas Sparks Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to improving cultural and international understanding through global education experiences for students of all ages. Between the foundation, and the personal gifts of Nicholas and Catherine Sparks, more than $10 million dollars have been distributed to deserving charities, scholarship programs, and projects. Because Nicholas and Catherine Sparks cover all operational expenses of the foundation, 100% of donations are devoted to programs.

Customer Reviews

Cardboard characters, predictable plot, and every cliche in the book.
reader
Maybe I set my expectations too high, but this book was too predictable and I felt cheated at the end.
S. Vines
If you're looking for an easy read romance story with a little mystery thrown in, this is your book.
GAMom

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 94 people found the following review helpful By Ratmammy VINE VOICE on April 20, 2005
Format: Hardcover
TRUE BELIEVER by Nicholas Sparks

March 25, 2005

In Nicholas Sparks' latest novel, TRUE BELIEVER, Jeremy Marsh is a science journalist whose forte is debunking supernatural phenomenon using science and technology. His latest challenge is to solve the mystery behind the rumors of ghosts living in a cemetery in the small town of Boone Creek, North Carolina. When he starts to fall in love with the local psychic's granddaughter, she does her best to dissuade him, knowing they come from different worlds and that nothing would come of this romance.

TRUE BELIEVER is a departure for Sparks, in that this is not a tragedy. It is a straightforward story of a man who is trying to solve the mystery of the ghosts in Cedar Creek Cemetery, and in the midst of working, he meets Lexie Darnell, a woman who has been hurt in the past and is afraid to love again. The two are worlds apart in terms of background, but he feels that they have a chance to make a go at it.

Lexie believes in the ghosts, as do many of the town's people. If Jeremy finds the solution to this puzzle, it would change life in Boone Creek and possibly ruin any chances Jeremy has with Lexie. But he continues on, wanting to prove that yet again he can solve any mystery that involves the supernatural.

I enjoyed this book, but it's not going to be a favorite. I have always enjoyed Sparks' tragedies (in particular MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE). TRUE BELIEVER was a well-written novel, but it lacks the "oomph" that is characteristic of his stories. The most enjoyable part of this story was the mystery behind the ghosts, but I in particular enjoyed the characters that filled the pages. Sparks always does a good job with the characters that grace the pages of his novels, and while the plot itself may lack something, TRUE BELIEVER is worth the read for any Sparks fan.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful By Angela Dalecki on May 21, 2005
Format: Hardcover
I became a fan of Nicholas Sparks about three years ago, when I read A Walk to Remember a few months before the movie debuted. I cried for a week. The Notebook reduced me to a sobbing wreck as well. So when I sat down to read his newest novel, True Believer, I made sure I was well-stocked with plenty of Kleenex. I was surprised to find I didn't need them.

The story is typical of Sparks' tried-and-true style of star-crossed lovers: Jeremy Marsh is a hotshot New York journalist whose life revolves around his career. His current stories involve researching (and debunking) the supernatural-when we first meet Jeremy, he's working on uncovering the sly tricks of Timothy Clausen, a John Edward-type "spirit guide." His next big story brings him to Boone Creek, North Carolina, to investigate a legend of ghostly lights in the town's cemetery. The small town of Boone Creek is pretty much the polar opposite of New York City, and Jeremy plans to get the heck out of there as soon as his research is complete.

Of course, things aren't always as easy as all that. While researching, Jeremy ends up meeting a young girl named Lexie, who runs the town library. Over the course of the week or so that Jeremy is in Boone Creek, they become friends and Jeremy quickly falls head over heels in love with her. Of course, their relationship is ultimately doomed-their homes and lifestyles are completely different, and Lexie doesn't want to give up her small, quiet life in Boone Creek any more than Jeremy wants to give up his career and fast-paced life in New York. It would take a miracle for their relationship to work-the type of miracle Jeremy doesn't believe in.

I generally like Nicholas Sparks' work, and I generally liked this book.
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75 of 90 people found the following review helpful By M. S. Butch VINE VOICE on May 12, 2005
Format: Hardcover
If you are a Sparks fan, you were probably prepared for this. I was not. The PW description seduced me into thinking it was a story about journalist investigating mysterious lights. It isn't. The lights serve only to get Our Hero to the place where he meets cliched smart beautiful librarian, so that he can ultimately embrace the charms of rural life.

Now, just about every romance formula is done over and over, and if it is done well, I enjoy it over and over. I did not think this was done well. The characters were all surface; there was no apparent reason for Hero to fall for this particular woman or she for him (except that pickings are slim in a very small town). And it struck me as being purely anti-moderniist/technological -- a tiny backwater town equated with all that is good. (the concomitant bad thinks about the small town did not figure in). On the whole, I would rate this similarly to a Danielle Steele, which is negative to me but of course, in the eyes of many, a high compliment.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful By Bookreporter on April 16, 2005
Format: Hardcover
In TRUE BELIEVER, journalist Jeremy Marsh spends his time debunking the supernatural. He has just finished exposing a fake television psychic, proving that the man was not able to read people's minds or see into their pasts. When he hears about a phenomenon happening in the small town of Boone Creek in North Carolina, where ghosts are seen inhabiting a local cemetery, Jeremy knows he will be able to find the truth behind the lights that are seen glimmering on certain nights above the cemetery grounds. He knows that ghosts do not truly exist.

When Jeremy arrives in Boone Creek, he experiences what small town life is all about. He's from the big city and feels like he's walked into a time warp. Everyone knows everyone, and gossip spreads like wildfire. His "hotel" is a hole-in-the-wall motel, filled with dead animals ranging from a bear to snakes and all sorts of wonderful critters that can be found in the wild. He's as far from New York as he can get, and he's not sure he likes it.

The very day he arrives in town, Jeremy makes a quick visit to Cedar Creek Cemetery, where the ghosts are reported to have been seen, when he notices a young woman there who catches his eye. He later finds out that her name is Lexie Darnell. Neither of them knows it but soon their lives will be changed forever. Lexie is the granddaughter of the woman who had invited him to visit the town. Doris Marsh is the town psychic.

As Jeremy slowly does his research in the library where Lexie happens to work, he gets to know her. Despite what he feels about the town, he finds himself interested in this woman who doesn't seem to want anything to do with him.
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