Book Review

I can't believe I am admitting that I read this book.

Let me try to explain...

Once upon a time, I had an hour commute to and from work. I passed the time by listening to audio books. These books were checked out from my local library. Said library did not have a very large selection, so by six months into it, I found myself listening to anything I could get my hands on just to pass that excrutiating hour stuck in traffic. Some choices were pleasantly surprising. I discovered lots of authors that I liked enough to actually read some of their work.


I also discovered Nicholas Sparks.


Ugh.


I began with a benign looking audiobook called The Rescue. By this time, Sparks was a fairly accomplished writer and although I had never read anything by him, I had seen The Notebook. Frankly, if you don't like that movie, you can just bite my hiney. That kiss in the rain alone is worth the price of admission. Anyway, I just want to establish that I didn't have any negative associations about the author going into this. The Rescue was so bad, I just had to check out Nights in Rodanthe. It did not disappoint. I must admit that both these audiobooks were so bad that they actually were entertaining. The reader, for some inexplicable reason, felt the need to change his voice for each character and as an added bonus, used a a horribly bad southern accent.


So knowing all this, why would I purchase and actually read another novel by this man? I have no idea. I found it at the Goodwill for 3 bucks. I was in the process of deciding that I could not finish the book I had been plodding through for a while. I convinced myself that this book would be a palate cleanser if you will. A light piece of fluff to meander through while I picked my next book to read. (I get nervous if I don't have a book to read when I finish my current pick. It's a sickness really.)


True Believer is about a science writer named Jeremy who debunks things for a living. He exposes psychics, ghost stories, etc. He travels to North Carolina to do a story about mysterious lights that appear in an old graveyard. Of course, he meets many colorful characters in this quirky small town.

Yawn.

Yeah, you've met all these characters before. Probably in a better book.

Then Jeremy meets Lexie, the beautiful librarian. Fast forward through two days and Jeremy and Lexie are desperately in love. Herein lies the real trouble with Nicholas Sparks. All of his characters seem to fall madly in love in ridiculously short periods of time. Good writers can get away with this. They do it by giving you some insight into a complex character that they have created which allows you to see how they form such a quick connection with another character. Sparks doesn't do this. He doesn't even attempt it. Then we must suffer as these two adult characters have endless conversations about why 'it will never work'. He's from the big city. She's a small town girl. (This occurs after the obligatory sex scene that seems to be written by someone without the slightest inkling as to how sex actually works.) They labor over their differences for so long that you will literally plead for a "Romeo and Juliet" type solution to their problem.




Stop reading here if you don't want me to ruin the ending for you...as if that's possible. Jeremy goes back to New York to be depressed after Lexie convinces him that she plans to marry the redneck town deputy. Lexie's meddling grandma (Did I mention that the grandma is psychic? No? Well she is.) comes after him to explain that Lexie only made up her engagement and that she really does love Jeremy but she's been hurt in the past, blah, blah, blah. Jeremy flies back to North Carolina and agrees to give up his big city life for Lexie. And even though the whole book has taken place over a literal span of three weeks, Lexie announces she is pregnant and, btw, it's a girl. I s*** you not.

I'm not hatin on ya if you like Nicholas Sparks. I love a lot of books that would be considered pure trash (the Stephanie Plum series, for example). But I think that his loyal readers could probably find all the stuff they like in his books in a better novel written by someone else. Just sayin....


**Update**
Oh hell, Sparks has written a damn sequel to this nonsense. I'm not sure I have it in me...