True Believer

About the True Believer series

Nicholas Sparks's True Believer (2005) sends Jeremy Marsh, a cynical New York City magazine writer who debunks supernatural claims for a living, to the small town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, to investigate mysterious lights reported in an old cemetery. There he meets Lexie Darnell, the town's guarded local librarian, and the two fall into a romance neither of them expected -- Jeremy pulled toward small-town life and Lexie's roots, Lexie wary of a big-city writer who'll eventually go home. The novel ends with Jeremy facing a choice between his New York career and the life Lexie represents, and with Lexie discovering she's pregnant.

At First Sight (2005), published the same year, picks up directly where True Believer leaves off rather than skipping ahead, following Jeremy and Lexie through their engagement, marriage, and the early complications of Lexie's pregnancy -- including a serious health scare -- while a subplot involving a stalker drawn to Lexie's local-celebrity engagement announcement raises the stakes further. Recurring Boone Creek figures from the first book, including Lexie's grandmother Doris (the town's informal psychic) and Jeremy's friend Alvin, carry through into the second, making this one of the more direct, continuous two-book stories in Sparks's otherwise mostly standalone body of work.

How to read this series

Read True Believer first, then At First Sight -- this is a genuine direct sequel, picking up the story where the first book ends rather than jumping ahead or switching to a new generation. Both were published in 2005, only months apart, and are best read close together since At First Sight assumes you already know Jeremy and Lexie's relationship history from book one. Unlike most of Sparks's other novels, which stand completely alone, this pairing is a continuous two-part story and works best read in sequence rather than picked up individually.