13. The Last Song

I'm obviously vocal enough about my disdain of Nicholas Sparks' writing that my aunt called me out on it last week when she saw I was reading this book. It's true. I find his writing style very elementary and his story lines very cliche and sugarcoated. I HATED The Notebook. I felt that the sentences were too short and the descriptions way too over the top. This led me to be anxious while reading. I HATE being anxious. I liked the storyline and the cute twist at the end of the The Wedding a little better, but not much. The ending of Dear John pissed me off and the rest of the books are all so similar they bleed together and I can't think of their titles nor their plots.

If you haven't heard me rant about this before, chances are you aren't around me that much. Anytime I have a literary discussion I find myself throwing in my dislike of Mr. Sparks. I'm sure he's a great guy. I'm sure he's encouraging people to read who might have never read before, but after having read so many books in my lifetime, he's not really one of my favorite authors. He doesn't really dig as deep as I'd like him to and, honestly, I really think he writes like a girl.

Now, before you yell at me about that, hear me out. Men are men. They don't react to situations like a female would. In general they aren't emotional. They aren't in touch with their sensitive side. Usually its easy to tell a male's writing style from that of a female. I won't go into specifics but we all know males and we all know females and we all know how they'd talk and express themselves and describe certain things. I simply think that Mr. Sparks is a little over the top and girly for a male. It's hard for me to see his feminine characters as really feminine because they are almost too good to be true. He almost has the womanly touch down pat and ,really, I think his male characters are too girly. It bugs the living daylights out of me! One instance in The Last Song drove me so mad I called my mother into the room to discuss it with her. The father in this story comments to his daughter that it's a "lovely" evening. I'm almost 26 years old and I have never once heard my father use that word, much less any other man I know. It's not a word men say! Use masculine words, man! It's just not right!

Now that I've successfully bashed the author (sorry about that, I guess...) I have to say this story wasn't so bad. It had an interesting plot, although it was quite easy to guess how it was going to end. The characters were also pretty likable, although I think he over explained their situations and over analyzed their flaws. I think a good author should allow his/her readers to draw their own conclusions in some instances but this book didn't really allow me the opportunity to do that.
I guess this issue came to be because this story is based on a screen play, which was then made into a movie which was released before the book was published. Normally this happens the other way around.

I always like read the book first so I can enjoy the story as a whole before it is crushed into a 2 hour and 14 minute time frame. Like I said, I like to be able to draw my conclusions and form my own opinions about the characters but for some reason (those pesky movie previews) I had to envision Miss Cyrus throughout this entire story. I had to picture her stomping around the house. I had to think about her sleeping with the turtles and her sobbing at the end... and oddly enough- throughout this whole book I didn't just see her playing the part- I saw her playing the part badly.

Granted, I did cry at the end (its just cause I'm emotional) I don't think this was one of his better works, In fact I have one request for Nicholas Sparks: Do not release a book again after the movie has been made. It REALLY ruined this story for me. I think I could have enjoyed it much more if I didn't have snippets of Hollywood's vision to blur my thinking.

I give it a 4 out of a 10. If you like Nicholas Sparks, you'll love it. I on the other hand needed something more.

13/52 Books (Currently 6 behind... Oops!)
4068 Pages Read.