The Choice

  I thought that with exams being over and with the summer holidays, I'd have more time to read and blog. Boy, was I wrong! Last week was stressful from start to finish and it consisted of two shows that I was part of at my local theatre and four nights of singing at a church conference that I helped to organise. Thankfully, everything was successful and I sighed a huge sigh of relief as I crashed into bed on Sunday evening. My fatigue was so much that I was bedridden for the whole of yesterday, regaining my strength! I am now rested and ready to review Nicholas Sparks' 'The Choice'.

  I've read a few of Sparks' books in my time; The Last Song (the film version with Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth still reduces me to a sobbing mess), A Walk to Remember (ditto for the film with Mandy Moore and Shane West), Dear John (I haven't seen the film with Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum yet but I cried a lot after reading the book), The Guardian and The Notebook. I'm going to drop a bombshell by saying that I personally think that both the novel and film versions of The Notebook are immensely overrated. That's right, I went there.

   'The Choice' was written in 2007 and it is the story of Travis Parker and his neighbour, Gabby Holland. Travis, a young bachelor who has it all: a great job, loyal friends and a waterfront house cannot understand why his neighbour seems to have taken such a strong dislike to him for no apparent reason and as the novel progresses, the two overcome many conflicts and challenges as love inadvertently develops between them.

  Whenever I think of this book, the word that comes to mind is 'meh'. Yes, MEH. It just didn't engage me. In fact, I actually read it for the first time two years ago and forgot about it. The copy that I have now was a birthday present. It says a lot that I actually re-read it, thinking it was a book that I had not read before. This is because the plot is just so characteristically Nicholas Sparks and samey that it just didn't stand out to me. As aforementioned, the Nicholas Sparks formula works sometimes but this time, I'm sad to say that it didn't.

  If you're unfamiliar with the Sparks formula, here are some of his most common elements; a dog, a male and female that initially despise each other but fall in love eventually, quite quickly and unrealistically, might I add, some sort of life threatening disease, cheesy and clichéd love quotes and dialogue that no one says in real life, an accident, war and one element that really annoys me is the setting- North Carolina. I know this is where Sparks lives but must he always base his novels here?

  The Choice bugged me for many reasons. One, I disliked Gabby's character because I can never agree with people who cheat. Never. I don't care if she cheated because she found true love. Cheating is still never cool in my books. This leads me on to the second reason why The Choice bugged me- I just couldn't believe and buy the love between Gabby and Travis. To me, it was too sudden and rushed. Can we have some character development, please? Call me a cynic and maybe I'm a hardhearted, unbeliever in 'true love'. Maybe. It'll take a lot to move the cold, cold cockles of my heart, that's for sure. Thirdly, to me, there was a huge disconnect between the first part and second part of the novel and the plot twist just came out of nowhere, in my opinion, with no build whatsoever towards it. In addition, the book's tagline: 'How far would you go to keep the hope of life alive?' irritated me immensely, due to the fact that it was repeated over and over again in the book.

  If I could go back in time and change my choice, I wouldn't have read this book again. I'm still a fan of Nicholas Sparks' work but to quote Randy Jackson, I'm not feelin' it this time, dawg.

Rating 2/5 **

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Choice-Nicholas-Sparks/dp/0751540579