“I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough..”
Remain by Nicholas Sparks with M. Night Shyamalan
Published by: Random House; October 14, 2025
Genres: Mystery | Thriller | Suspense | Fiction | Romance
Pages: 352 pages (hardcover version)
Format: Kindle
Source: NetGalley
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T/W: Death, Depression, Loss, Nudity, Violence
★★☆☆☆ | 2 / 5
A one-of-a-kind novel that grapples with the supernatural mysteries of life, death, and human connection—an unprecedented collaboration between the globally bestselling author of love stories like The Notebook and the renowned writer and director of blockbuster thrillers like The Sixth Sense
When New York architect Tate Donovan arrives in Cape Cod to design his best friend’s summer home, he is hoping to make a fresh start. Recently discharged from an upscale psychiatric facility where he was treated for acute depression, he is still wrestling with the pain of losing his beloved sister. Sylvia’s deathbed revelation—that she can see spirits who are still tethered to the living world, a gift that runs in their family—sits uneasily with Tate, who struggles to believe in more than what reason can explain. But when he takes up residence at a historic bed-and-breakfast on the Cape, he encounters a beautiful young woman named Wren who will challenge every assumption he has about his logical and controlled world.
Tate and Wren find themselves forging an immediate connection, one that neither has ever experienced before. But Tate gradually discovers that below the surface of Wren’s idyllic small-town life, hatred, jealousy, and greed are festering, threatening their fragile relationship just as it begins to blossom. Tate realizes that in order to free Wren from an increasingly desperate fate, he will need to unearth the truth about her past before time runs out . . . a quest that will make him doubt whether we can ever believe the stories we tell about ourselves, and the laws that govern our existence. Love—while transformative—can sometimes be frightening.
A story about the power of transcendent emotion, Remain asks us all: Can love set us free not only from our greatest sorrows, but even from the boundaries of life and death?
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with the advance reader copy.
In theory, this novel should have been amazing. Nicholas Sparks is well known for novels like The Notebook and A Walk to Remember. Having him team up with M. Night Shyamalan, the author and director of supernatural films such as The Sixth Sense and Signs, promised a story about supernatural love and a mystery involving the ‘ghost’ of the plot.
However, many aspects of this novel fell short of expectations.
The characters are flat, lacking emotion and seeming rather robotic in their actions and movements. The writing was subpar. Some of the events in the novel were very unrealistic.
I’ll give it some saving grace, as the dialogue is pretty good. I honestly think the presentation of the story could be improved – no, it *should* be improved. There is too much telling and not enough showing, which is the number one rule of writing a story. I understand that this was probably written for the screen, and perhaps it should have remained in that script format rather than being written into a novel.
You might enjoy it more than I did, especially if you like reading Nicholas Sparks. I don’t know if that’s how his writing style really is, but it left a bad taste in my mouth, and unfortunately, I won’t be trying to read any of his other more well-known works.
★★☆☆☆ | 2 / 5
