Let's try an analogy here.
Nicholas Sparks is to love stories as Dan Brown is to quest stories.
That's all he writes. Doesn't he want to mix it up a little, give himself a bit of a challenge? I can tell you exactly what will happen in any of his books. A boy and a girl have an improbable meeting. It's love at first sight for at least one of them. They form a seemingly perfect relationship until the one big "thing" surfaces and everything falls apart. One ends up fighting for the other and finally in the end everything works out.
I should give him some credit. I enjoyed watching The Notebook and A Walk To Remember when I saw those movies. But after reading (or watching) a couple of cookie-cutter plots, you really need to move onto something else to keep your mind stimulated and entertained. Even with Jane Austen, I had to take a break from her because there was such a common thread stitched through all her stories. It's like movies on the Hallmark channel. No offense to Hallmark, because I really like working there, but I'm surprised that Sparks doesn't have an ongoing contract with them to write all the movies they air.
I am two-thirds of the way through reading The Lucky One, my first Nicholas Sparks book. The element of this story that keeps me interested is that I think he has come up with two genuinely good characters. If they were real people, I would like them. He has also invented one extremely bad character that annoys and aggravates me, and I want to see him get his piece by the end of the book.
His writing, however, does not impress me one bit. I have eighth graders who write better than he does. Hasn't he ever heard of show, don't tell? And he really should try to vary his word choice - include some "vivid verbs" and work on more of his sentence structure.
A couple of my female students really like these books. I can understand why. They are young teenagers who are captivated by the idea that true love awaits them. Admittedly, I have that dream too and I used to read more novels akin to these love stories that Sparks writes. I've just read or watched too many similar plots and "happy endings" in books or movies like this, which simply gets boring after a while. Give me a more complex plot. I want to be truly shocked by the climax of the story or a sudden twist in the events leading up to it. I want to wonder if the main characters will succeed by the end of the story, and not already know that some way or another they will end up together.
I guess this is more of a holiday read for me. It's an easy book to get through and it's not like it's a bad book. Telling the same story over and over again isn't as much bad as it is boring. With every book I read I'm expanding my horizons and familiarity with literature. I get ideas for my own writing from every book I read, whether it's something I find inspiring and may want to venture into someday, or something I find repulsive and know I want to stay away from. Nicholas Sparks isn't repulsive, but I wonder how much pride he takes in cranking out story after story like a well-oiled machine?
You may as well give The Lucky One a try. I've also had a student recommend The Choice to me, and it may be worthwhile to read The Notebook because I honestly did enjoy that movie. My advice? Read one and then switch to a couple of different books before reading another. Everything in moderation, right?
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