Genre: Fiction—Romance
Completed: 27 January 2013
Summary & Review:
When Katie arrives in the small town of Southport, North Carolina, she is looking for nothing more than anonymity and safety from her abusive husband. Hesitant to form new relationships, she attempts to draw no attention. But, in a small town, frequently running into the same people, Katie soon starts opening up and becomes fast friends with the woman who moves in next door. Helped along by her neighbor’s gentle prodding, she eventually falls in love with a widower and forms strong bonds with his two young children despite her initial reluctance. Her new found peace and happiness lasts only a short time before her past comes back and finds her.
I can’t believe this is the third—third!—Nicholas Sparks book on this list. In my defense, since the books my wife and I read don’t overlap much (I couldn’t pay her enough to read Mark Steyn), I feel like I should occasionally read what she has, hence the Nicholas Sparks books, The Help, and the Twilight series, etc. Okay, fine, I read all the Twilight books completely of my own accord, but it was a twofer since it also happened to overlap with her reading so we could talk about them.
As for the content of the book, it was poor. Nicholas Sparks is not a particularly strong writer, nor was this plot engaging. The romance between the two main characters was rote and predictable. Their dialogue was identical to every other couple found in Sparks’ books, full of declarations of “I’ve always loved you,” etc. My biggest complaint, however, was the fact that the baddie in the book, i.e. the alcoholic, abusive misogynist husband, was of course a Christian who was always quoting Bible verses to himself, using the Bible to justify his behavior. I guess Sparks feels Christians are ignorant, sexist, abusive hypocrites. That is definitely the trendy thing to do these days, to point out instances where people of faith don’t always live up to what they believe. As Jonah Goldberg once put it, and I am paraphrasing as best I can remember, “I’d rather have convictions and morals and at times fall short of those, then have no morals or convictions at all.”
Rating: 3.0
1 comment:
I thought it was better than a measly 3! Maybe a 4 :)
Post a Comment