Nicholas Sparks: A Comprehensive Review of This Incredible Writer and His Twelve Incredible Books

I read my first Nicholas Sparks novel after seeing A Walk To Remember and have been hooked on his tales of love ever since.  I could have easily written one review per novel and gotten an enormous amount of Gather points but chose instead to write one review of Nicholas Sparks as a writer, with short summaries of each novel he's written intertwined in.  Please note I've italicized everything retrieved from the Nicholas Sparks' website.

 

Nicholas Sparks captured my attention when I saw A Walk To Remember, a film starring Mandy Moore and Shane West.  After seeing the movie with my ex-boyfriends little sister (I was babysitting her), I quickly went to Barnes and Noble for the book which proved better than the movie could ever be (doesn't it always work out that way?).  More on A Walk To Remember later.

 

I think one of the things that is so enchanting about the stories that Nicholas Sparks tells is the fact that each is a love story that reminds us all that there really is true love out there and that there really are genuinely good people, even though they may be hard to find.  Men are reminded that there are women out there who aren't conniving and confusing, and women are reminded that there are men out there who are still chivalrous, romantic and classy.  It's all a matter of just waiting for the time when that person happens to cross your path: it's all about fait.  In his writing, Sparks also goes into other issues and teaches his reading about different diseases in some of his novels.  In his most recent book, Dear John, one of the character in the book might have Asperger's Syndrome, a disease similar to autism.  In The Rescue, one of the characters suffers from the same learning disabilities that Sparks' own son suffers from.  He writes what he knows which is also important when trying to get through to the reader.  All of his novels have characters based on real people in his life, which of course makes the stories seem so much more real than if everything written would have just been from imagination.  All of his novels also take place in real life towns and cities, all in North Carolina.  There is this reality in all of his writing that makes us all realize that everything will turn out right in the end, there is such thing as everlasting love, and everything happens for a reason.

 

The Notebook, Sparks' first novel, published in 1996 and only the third novel in history to spend over a year on the hardcover best seller list, takes place in both the years after World War II and in the mid-90's.  Noah Calhoun is restoring a house that holds memories of the love he once shared with Allie Nelson.  Currently engaged to another, more wealthy man, Allie also secretly yearns to have her love with Noah back.  The story is told through Noah, who reads to Allie in the present as she is suffering from Alzheimer's in the nursing home where they both now live.  She has no idea it's a real story, but he, on the other hand, holds those memories deep in his heart.  A story of a love that spanned over fifty years, The Notebook was the first of twelve tear jerkers Sparks' would go on to write.  Most recently, The Notebook was adapted into a major film starring James Gardner as old Noah, Ryan Gosling as young Noah, Gena Rollins as old Allie, and Rachel McAdams as young Allie.  The movie, although couldn't compare to the novel, was excellent and I highly recommend reading the book and then renting the movie if you haven't already seen it.

 

Sparks' second novel, Message in a Bottle, spent seven months on the hardcover bestseller list and another five months on the paperback best seller list.  Published in 1998, the rights to make the novel into a film were sold when the novel was only half finished.  The film starred Kevin Costner and Robin-Wright Penn.  I had seen it when it came out in theaters but never realized that it had been a book first until after I discovered Sparks' writing.  It is the story of a Boston journalist who, while on vacation, discovers a bottle with a message to a woman named Catharine.  She investigates further and is taken to a seaside town in North Carolina where she meets the man tossing the note filled bottle into the sea.  After losing his wife, the man writes the notes as a way of communicating with her and getting out his feelings.  Like in all Nicholas Sparks books, there is a deep love story involved that will most certainly bring tears to the reader's eyes.

 

The film version of A Walk to Remember starred Mandy Moore as Jamie Sullivan and Shane West as Landon Carter.  The novel (1999) spent six months on the hardcover best seller list and another four months as a paperback best seller.  Landon is a rebel who, because of certain circumstance has to spend time with Jamie Sullivan, the plain-Jane daughter of the town's Baptist minister.  As they both learn and grow from one another, they fall deeply in love but when Landon finds out that Jamie is suffering from Leukemia, he gets angry at her for not telling him.  He realizes that their love prevails and being angry with her is killing her faster.  Their love, of course, prevails through it all.  I was hysterical crying at the end of both the book and the movie.

 

The first of Sparks' novel to reach #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List was his fourth, The Rescue.  It spent five months on the paperback bestsellers list.  This is the love story of a fireman who had been hurt in the past and was scared to rediscover love, and a women, Denise, and her learning disabled son, Kyle.  Denise and Kyle are in a terrible car accident and Kyle is no where to be found however the fireman find him and through the search and the tribulations, Denise and the man who came to she and Kyle's rescue fall in love.  The novel also tells us a lot about learning disabilities and the struggles that the parents of children with learning disabilities may go through, as well as the joy they feel when their child has made a positive step in the right direction.

 

2001's A Bend in the Road is the story of police office Miles Ryan who loses his wife to a tragic car accident.  Miles never believes there can be love after Missy until he meets his son's teacher.  Of course they fall in love but there is a secret that threatens their relationship.  In true Nicholas Sparks form, their love endures it all making the novel another tear-jerker.

 

Night in Rodanthe (pronunciation?), was published in 2002.  In this story, Sparks reminds his readers that love is possible at ALL ages.  Forty year old Adrienne gets left by her husband for a much younger woman.  Adrienne quickly retreats to a friends inn located in a coastal North Carolina town, where she meets a man who was also recently hurt, and had recently left his career behind in his hometown.  Once again, love develops amid some form of hardship.

 

Novel #7, The Guardian was published in 2003.  I have copied and pasted the synopsis from Nicholas Sparks' website:

 

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Nights in Rodanthe explores a darker realm of the heart in an explosive and emotional tale of love and obsession. At 29, Julie Barenson is too young to give up on love. Four years after her husband's tragic death, she is finally ready to risk giving her heart to someone again. But to whom? Should it be Richard Franklin, who is handsome and sophisticated and treats her like a queen, or Mike Harris, who is Julie's best friend in the world, though not as debonair? Now, with a decision that should bring her more happiness than she's had in years, Julie's life is about to become a living nightmare, as one man's jealousy spins into a deadly obsession.

 

This novel, like the six before it, made me cry.  (Remember folks, when reading a Nicholas Sparks novel, make sure you ARE NOT IN PUBLIC when you reach the last three or four chapters!  You'll be sure to be thought of as a nut job for crying so hysterically!)  It spent five months on the best seller list. 

 

His next novel, The Wedding (2003), is the follow-up to The Notebook.  Noah and Allie's son-in-law is struggling to save his marriage amid preparations for his own daughter's upcoming nuptials.  He is not one to show emotion but inspired by his in-laws love story that spanned fifty years, he is able to save his marriage and make is stronger than it was before.

 

Three Weeks With My Brother, Nicholas' eighth published work which he co-wrote with brother Micah, is an autobiography of sorts that take us into Nicholas' entire life.  Intertwined in his own history, is the story of the soul-searching journey Nicholas and Micah took around the world.

 

In 2005, Sparks' published True Believer, the story of Jeremy Marsh, a writer for Scientific American who specializes in the supernatural.  Jeremy travels to Boone Creek, North Carolina to investigate a letter he got regarding some strange ghostly lights in the cemetery there.  When he arrives in N.C. he meets Lexie Darnell, a woman unwilling to move from the people she loves and the town she best knows.  Jeremy never could have imaged he would fall in love with someone while doing his story yet he now has a tough decision to make: return to N.Y. or leave everything he knows for a woman he has fallen madly in love with.

 

At First Sight, also published in 2005, is Sparks' eleventh novel and second ever sequel.  In the sequel to True Believer:

 

There are a few things Jeremy Marsh was sure he'd never do: he'd never leave New York City; never give his heart away again after barely surviving one failed marriage; and most of all, never become a parent. Now, Jeremy is living in the tiny town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, married to Lexie Darnell, the love of his life, and anticipating the birth of their daughter. But just as his life seems to be settling into a blissful pattern, an unsettling and mysterious message re-opens old wounds and sets off a chain of events that will forever change the course of this young couple's marriage.

 

The novel is yet another one that made me cry and another memorable story of everlasting love.

 

I am currently on page 210 of 276 of Sparks' most recently published novel, Dear John.  It has made me cry several times already and is a story that reflects on the hardships and realities of a post-9/11 world and those issues that develop between the soldiers who are overseas and the ones they love:

An angry rebel, John dropped out of school and enlisted in the Army, not knowing what else to do with his life--until he meets the girl of his dreams, Savannah. Their mutual attraction quickly grows into the kind of love that leaves Savannah waiting for John to finish his tour of duty, and John wanting to settle down with the woman who has captured his heart. But 9/11 changes everything. John feels it is his duty to re-enlist. And sadly, the long separation finds Savannah falling in love with someone else. "Dear John," the letter read...and with those two words, a heart was broken and two lives were changed forever. Returning home, John must come to grips with the fact that Savannah, now married, is still his true love—and face the hardest decision of his life.

This new Nicholas Sparks novel is certainly set to be another great American love story, as all of his novels have been.

One of the great things about the writings of Nicholas Sparks is the fact that when reading his novels, the reader can vividly picture in their minds everything that is going on.  There are no fuzzy pictures, and with so many details in his writings, you can almost feel what the characters in the novels are feeling.  This is just one of the many things that makes his writing so unique.  Although his stories (aside from Three Weeks With My Brother) are all based around love stories and are all semi-predictable in that the prevailing theme of "love conquers all" is in each and every one of them, they each bring different feelings to the surface of the reader.  They allow your imagine to run wild with your own movie inside your head.  When reading The Notebook, I pictured it far differently and in much more detail than what the movie depicted it to be, and that's ok, and I think that's what is so special about Sparks' writing.  No matter how good a screenplay, how amazing the actors and actresses in the film, how well the director directed or the producer produced, they will never ever get a full grasp around the feelings and thoughts that go through the readers entire body while simply sitting down with the books.

I'm not sure what else to say here besides that I think each and every person should go pick up each and every one of Nicholas Sparks' novels.  Each and every one of them are incredible in their own right and each and every one of them will surely become a great American classic, as other novels have become, years from today.

To purchase any of his novels, visit Amazon  or Barnes and Noble online.