See Me

I had stopped reading Nicholas Sparks years before See Me came out. Not because the books were bad, but because I thought I knew exactly what they were. Boy meets girl. Something sad happens. Someone writes a letter. The formula can be comforting, but it can also become a cage. See Me looked different. The cover was dark. The premise involved a stalker. I picked it up expecting a romance with a thriller bolted on. What I found was a book that takes both halves seriously, even when they do not fit together perfectly.

Sparks published See Me in 2015 through Grand Central Publishing. The hardcover runs 496 pages, and it was his nineteenth novel. It is set in Wilmington, North Carolina, and it alternates between the story of a man trying to rebuild his life and a woman trying to escape a past that will not stay buried. The romance is the center. The thriller is the engine. The book is at its best when the two are pulling in the same direction.

Colin

Colin Hancock is twenty-eight and trying to stay out of prison. He has a history of violence, a diagnosis of ADHD, and a childhood spent being shipped from one military school to another. His parents are wealthy and distant. The schools were supposed to fix him. Instead, they gave him a education in cruelty. Older students hazed him. Administrators ignored it. He learned to fight because fighting was the only thing that made the hazing stop.

By the time the novel begins, Colin has made a deal with the district attorney. If he stays out of trouble for five years, his record will be erased. If he is arrested again, he will go to prison for nearly a decade. He is in therapy. He is working out. He is studying to become a teacher. He wants to teach third grade because a third-grade teacher was the only adult who ever made him feel capable.

Colin's defining trait is honesty. He says exactly what he thinks, even when it would be easier to lie. The honesty is both a virtue and a liability. It makes him a good narrator. It also makes him volatile. He does not have a filter, and when he feels threatened, he goes on the attack.

Maria

Maria Sanchez is twenty-eight and also trying to rebuild. She grew up in a warm, close family. Her parents are immigrants from Mexico. She went to Duke Law School. She became a prosecutor in Charlotte. She was good at her job, and then one case broke her.

Maria prosecuted Gerald Laws, a man who beat his girlfriend, Cassie Manning. Laws pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, served nine months, and then stalked and murdered Cassie before killing himself. Cassie's mother later died by suicide. Cassie's father, Dr. Avery Manning, lost his medical license. Cassie's brother, Lester, was committed to a psychiatric hospital after sending Maria threatening notes. Maria started having panic attacks. She resigned and moved back to Wilmington.

The case is the wound that never closes. Maria is not just afraid of Lester. She is afraid of the possibility that she made a mistake, that the system she believed in failed, and that she cannot protect the people she loves. She is also lonely. She wants a family. She is approaching thirty and wondering whether the life she planned is still available to her.

Her family is the novel's warmth. Her parents, Carmen and Felix, are loving and nosy. Her sister, Serena, is a college student with a sharp tongue and a good heart. Her friend Jill is a lawyer who left the same firm and wants Maria to join her new practice. The family scenes are loud and crowded, and they make the stalker plot more frightening because the reader knows what Maria has to lose. Sparks is often criticized for sentimental family portraits, but here the warmth serves a purpose. It raises the stakes.

The romance

Colin and Maria meet during a rainstorm. Maria has a flat tire. Colin stops to help. It is a classic meet-cute, and Sparks knows it. The scene works because Colin is not trying to charm her. He is just trying to change a tire. Maria notices his bruised face and his direct manner. She is intrigued.

They meet again through Maria's sister, Serena, who is in Colin's class at UNC Wilmington. Serena recognizes him and arranges a dinner. Afterward, Maria finds Colin fishing on the pier. They talk. Colin tells her about his past without softening it. Maria tells him about the Laws case. The conversation is the best scene in the book because it is two people being honest about the worst things that have happened to them.

The relationship develops quickly. They paddleboard. Colin reveals why he wants to teach. Lily, Evan's fiancée, secretly teaches Colin to salsa, and he surprises Maria at a warehouse dance. They spend the night together. The next morning, they say they love each other. Colin tells Maria's father the truth about his past. The romance is sweet, and it is also a little too easy. Sparks is good at the courtship. He is less good at the ordinary work of a relationship.

The stalker

The thriller plot begins with flowers. Pink roses arrive at Maria's office with a note that says, "You will know how it feels." Maria throws them away. More flowers appear, this time on the passenger seat of her car. Then the notes start. Then the family dog dies. Then Maria's tires are slashed. Then her condo is destroyed.

The campaign is designed to terrify. The phrase "See me just as I see you" appears in one of the notes, and Maria recognizes it from the messages Lester sent her years earlier. The title of the novel comes from that phrase. It is a demand for recognition, and it is also a threat. The stalker wants Maria to see him, and he wants her to know that he sees her. The intimacy is the point. Stalking is not just violence. It is a performance of intimacy without consent.

The police focus on Lester. He is in a psychiatric hospital, but he has access to the outside world. He confronts Maria at gunpoint outside her family home, and Colin races to the house. Lester escapes with Maria's phone. Colin tracks the phone to a bungalow, and Detective Margolis is shot when he enters. Colin tackles Lester and saves the detective's life. The scene is tense, but it is also a fake-out. Lester is dangerous, but he is not the person behind the whole campaign.

The investigation then turns to Dr. Avery Manning. Manning has been cooperating with the police, but there are inconsistencies. He points them toward Mark Atkinson, Cassie's former boyfriend, who has disappeared. The breakthrough comes when Colin notices the letterhead of a foundation that has offered Serena a scholarship. The foundation is called the Charles Alexander Foundation. Manning's dead son was named Alexander Charles. The name is reversed. The foundation is fake. Manning created it to get close to Serena.

The icehouse

The climax takes place in an abandoned icehouse on the waterfront. Manning has kidnapped Serena. He has beaten her and tied her to a chair. Colin finds them. Manning hits him with a flashlight and fractures his skull. Then Manning sets the building on fire.

Colin regains consciousness and drags Serena out of the burning building. Manning shoots him in the shoulder with a shotgun. Then Manning drives toward Serena. Colin steps into the path of the car. Evan, who has followed Colin, crashes his Prius into Manning's Camry, pushing both vehicles toward the fire.

The ending is chaotic and physical. It is also the moment when Colin's violence becomes something other than a liability. He uses his strength to protect people, not to settle a score. The book does not pretend that this solves his problems. He needs surgery. His shoulder may never fully heal. Evan is badly injured. Serena has scars. The cost is real.

Manning's motive is revenge, but the novel is careful to show that his grief has curdled into something else. He lost his daughter because the system failed her. He lost his license, his son, and his sense of purpose. He blames Maria because she was the prosecutor who made the deal. The logic is twisted, but it is not incomprehensible. That is what makes him scary. He is not a monster from a horror movie. He is a man who has convinced himself that his cruelty is justice.

The epilogue takes place the following spring at Evan and Lily's wedding. Margolis has survived and thanks Colin. Lester has died by suicide in his cell. Forensic evidence confirms that Manning killed Atkinson and orchestrated the stalking campaign. Maria is working at a new firm. Colin asks her to meet his parents. It is a hopeful ending, but it is not a tidy one.

What works

See Me is better than it has any right to be. The romance is warm, and the thriller is genuinely suspenseful. Sparks is good at pacing. He knows how to end a chapter on a hook, and he knows how to make a small town feel claustrophobic. The scenes at Maria's family home are especially good. The family is loud, affectionate, and protective, and their presence raises the stakes of the stalker plot.

Colin is one of Sparks's more interesting protagonists. He is not a generic nice guy. He is a man with a temper and a record, and the book does not excuse him. It shows him trying to be better, failing, and trying again. Maria is also more than a love interest. She has a career, a family, and a history that matters to the plot.

Where it creaks

The book is too long. The middle section repeats information, and some of the domestic scenes drag. The thriller plot depends on coincidence, and the villain's plan is more elaborate than it needs to be. Manning's motivation is understandable, but his methods are cartoonish. The fake foundation is a clever detail, but it strains credulity.

The romance also moves too fast. Colin and Maria fall in love within days. The book tells us they have a deep connection before it shows us enough of one. Readers who want a slow build will be frustrated. Readers who want a fast, emotional story will be satisfied.

The prose is plain. Sparks is not a stylist, and some sentences are doing work that the scene should do. The dialogue is functional rather than memorable. The book is designed to be read quickly, and it is.

There is also a political problem at the center of the book. Colin's violence is treated as a symptom of trauma, and the novel asks the reader to sympathize with him. That sympathy is mostly earned, but it sits uneasily with the fact that Maria is also afraid of him. She tells him so after the nightclub scene. The book does not resolve that fear. It lets the romance continue, and it asks the reader to trust that Colin's love will make him safe. Some readers will find that comforting. Others will find it disturbing.

Why it works anyway

See Me works because it takes Colin seriously. It does not turn him into a misunderstood angel. It shows him losing control, and it shows the consequences. It also takes Maria's fear seriously. The stalker plot is not just a way to add suspense. It is a way to test whether Maria can trust anyone again, including herself.

The book is not a perfect blend of romance and thriller. The two halves sometimes fight for space. But the fight is interesting, and the result is a book that is more ambitious than it looks. I finished it in two nights, and I thought about Colin for a while afterward. That is more than I expected.