Novelish

This book was a #1 New York Times bestseller.

It has a 4.5-star rating on Amazon, out of more than a thousand reviews.

Barnes & Noble reviewers give it a perfect 5, out of 750. (”This was the first romance book I actually liked!” one writes.)

Excuse me, but how the hell is this possible?

It’s obvious that there are a considerable number of Nicholas Sparks fans - so I may well regret saying this later on - but I think this is quite likely the most overrated piece of crap I’ve read in, like, ever.

I’ll try and list the reasons why. (Have you noticed that talking about books you don’t like is at least as much fun as talking about books you do? It is for me, at least.)

• First, I should say that I haven’t read much romance compared to other genres, but I don’t have anything against it - and I don’t think A Walk to Remember was good for a romance, even.

  Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle is good, and one of my favorite books. Or Pride & Prejudice, if you count classics. Or Diana Gabaldon’s books. Even a young adult romance novel like Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight I could have fun with (despite the somewhat icky style) - but I can’t say the same for A Walk to Remember.

• I didn’t like any of the characters. Yes, that may be partly because they’re fanatically religious. Any of the nice things Jamie did that might make me like her are reversed the moment she pulls out her bible (which she does a lot). And when she eventually dies, I don’t care at all - I’m indifferent.

• Oops. I shouldn’t have said that, should I? Except I don’t suppose it matters terribly, because due to a lot of not-so-subtle foreshadowing, I correctly guessed exactly how it would end by page 40 or so.

• The style is very casual, as though the narrator is talking to you directly. John Marsden does that kind of thing pretty well from what I’ve seen, even though I don’t prefer it personally. But I don’t think Nicholas Sparks does it well at all. It might be simply because he says “guess” all the time.

• And then there’s careless/repetitive sentences in general. My favorite example:

  She stopped again before going on, her voice becoming more emotional as she went on.

  Does that make anyone else cringe? I don’t see why his editors didn’t catch that.