"Poignant family drama"
New York book editor Katie Wilkinson believed that she
found her soul mate in poet-house painter Matt Harrison.
However, instead of a lifetime together, they share a year
before Matt vanishes. After disappearing from her life,
Matt mails Katie a diary written by his wife Suzanne. Katie cannot help but read the journal that Suzanne has
written to her and Matt's son. She explains how she was a
yuppie doctor in Boston until she suffered a heart attack
in her mid thirties. Knowing she needed a lifestyle
change, Suzanne fled to Martha's Vinyard where she falls in
love with Matt. They marry and have a child. As she
reads, Katie begins to feel she knows Suzanne and Nicholas
as old friends. Still even she wonders if she should try
to see Matt one last time once she finishes the cherished
diary lovingly written by a mother to a son? Fans of James Patterson's powerful Cross mysteries will
find SUZANNE'S DIARY FOR NICHOLAS quite a departure for the
popular author. There is a mystery of sorts and plenty of
suspense but in a different manner than usual for a James
Patterson novel, but no murders or crimes are committed.
Still, the writer flexes his muscles as he provides a
strong, insightful, yet teary character study that looks
closely at loss through the souls of Suzanne and Matt and
the reactions of Katie. Using his usual switching from
first to third and back to first case, Mr. Patterson
provides a warm, somewhat overly maudlin tale that will
stir the audience to want more dramas of this sort from a
talented scribe. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted July 13, 2001
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James Patterson has written a love story!—a powerfully moving and suspenseful novel about families, loss, new love, and hope. Katie Wilkinson has found her perfect man at last. He's a writer, a house painter, an original thinker—everything she's imagined she wanted in a partner. But one day, without explanation, he disappears from her life, leaving behind only a diary for her to read. This diary is a love letter written by a new mother named Suzanne for her baby son, Nicholas. In it she pours out her heart about how she and the boy's father met, about her hopes for marriage and family, and about the unparalleled joy that having a baby has brought into her life. As Katie reads this touching document, it becomes clear that the lover who has just left her is the husband and father in this young family. She reads on, filled with terror and hope, as she struggles to understand what has happened-and whether her new love has a prayer of surviving. Written with James Patterson's perfect pitch for emotion and suspense, Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas captures beautifully the joys of a new family as it builds to an overwhelmingly moving climax. This is an unforgettable love story, at once heartbreaking and full of hope.
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