Mushy tale wins my Heart

A book review from my side 🙂 Something which I have hardly done on my blog. But I just had to do it because I have gone nuts after reading this book. I have fallen in love with – “the love” portrayed in this book. I hated romantic novels in the past. My experience with “Pride and Prejudice” was pathetic. Now please don’t give me those looks. Every girl I have met so far has liked Jane Austen’s books. But I just felt them to be kinda boring. I always liked Fiction which were either Sci-Fi or Suspense or Murder mystery or Humor or just Science. I never read any romantic novel until now (I am not considering Twilight series since they are fantasy based). But I enjoyed watching such movies. I had never read a spiritual/philosophical book until I read ‘the Alchemist‘ and fell in love with the book. It made an entry into my all-time most favourite books.

I loved ‘The Notebook‘ movie a lot and had watched it a couple of times in the past 🙂 I had seen the trailer of the new movie ‘Dear John‘, also written by Nicholas Sparks (the same writer who wrote ‘The notebook’). I expected the movie to be good and thought I will watch it. How did I end up reading the book? Hmm.. I was in this bookshop and I did not know which book to pick up. None of them looked interesting and then suddenly I saw this.

The summary at the back of the book looked interesting and I thought why not read it. Once I had done a similar mistake of buying the book “Nineteen Minutes” just like that and that book could not hold my interest for even ten minutes (forget nineteen minutes). It was one of the most boring books I had tried reading in my life (I never finished reading it :D).

I had a train to board that day and I was waiting for it. I just read the prologue to pass some time and liked it.I liked the first sentence in the book which starts like this: “What does it mean to truly love another?“. You will eventually find an answer to that 🙂

After reading the Prologue, I closed the book thinking that I will read it when I am on the train. But then I got tempted. Why not read the first chapter? Second Chapter? and so on. I boarded the train, came home and was still glued to the book. I had finished 50% of the book in one go that day. It was THAT interesting. The narration was just toooo amazing. Even though there is no suspense or mystery or murder, it still keeps its readers glued to it 🙂 Isn’t it wonderful? I finally finished it yesterday and felt better. I was so anxious to finish reading it that I skipped my sleep to complete it.

‘Dear John’ is a very touching love story. The main characters are John Tyree and Savannah Lynn Curtis and the story takes place in North Carolina. The whole story is narrated by John and we look at everything from his point of view. John is an army soldier and on one of his vacations, he meets this nice lady Savannah. They are very much different in everything. Savannah is a well-educated girl who has loving parents and is a very helpful and caring person. John and Savannah fall in love but John has to leave her once his vacation is over. He just has Savannah’s letter with him, which starts with ‘Dear John, …’ and that’s the name of the book too 🙂 They try to keep in touch through mails and phone calls but then things start slipping.

The 9/11 attack takes place at that time and when John returns home from his service, his life gets shattered into pieces. What exactly happens? Find out after reading the book 🙂 The way it has been written makes all the difference. It’s not a very uncommon tale but I can so easily relate to John and understand what he is feeling. The story was quite predictable but reading it was still a pleasure.

A movie has been made out of this book and it already got released this month. I so badly want to watch it now 🙂 But the reviews say that the movie is not as good as the book. It never is, for that matter 🙂 They cannot add all the emotions that the writer puts into the book.

I now want to read ‘The Notebook‘ really badly, since I like the way this author writes. I liked the movie a lot and hence, I am sure I will like the book too. It seems the movie has a different ending and not the ending given in the book.

Other books written by Nicholas Sparks are: Message in a Bottle (), A Walk to Remember(), The Rescue, A Bend in the Road, Nights in Rodanthe (), The Guardian, The Wedding, Three Weeks with my Brother, True Believer, At First Sight, The Choice, The Lucky One() and The Last Song(Not that great).

I have really become a fan of Nicholas Spark’s writing style. Also most of these books have been made into a movie already and the rest of them are going to turn into a movie soon. If you are not an emotional person, you may not like any of these books written by him 🙂

Now suggest me more romantic novels people 😀

Updated 02/27/2010: I happened to watch Dear John today. It was a decent movie. The ending in the movie is quite different from that in the book. And also they have changed some characters like Tim and Alan. They have also cut down the parts where John spends a week with Savannah and how they get into fights. But overall it was not at all bad. So I loved both the book and the movie. 🙂