"The Choice": Not My Best Pick For Reading Material

I already know what you're thinking, this is a Nicholas Sparks book you weenie, why are you reading this? For the record, I really do like Nicholas Sparks books, my favorite being Safe Haven (not the movie, mind you, because the trailer looked nothing like what the book was about). I remember the Last Song pretty well too and I didn't mind that, nor Dear John, even though that was probably my least favorite to date. This one? It was only eh.

First of all, it's short. According to my Nook, it's only 220 something pages. At first, I was psyched because I didn't have to read that much, but after finishing the book, I wish there was more relationship development. In the first half of the book, Sparks tried to do that; he introduces the main love interests and have them interact with each other. To me, though, this was the most unbelievable part of the entire book because they fell in love so fast. Like there was a few meetings where nothing happened romantically, although you were expecting it to lead there and then BAM INSTA-LOVE. I had to check and make sure I wasn't reading a YA novel or like Twilight because I did not think adult romance novels had this concept.

Apparently, as I learned from this book, they do.

The second half of the book I won't spoil for you, but, if you read the prologue and the title, you were probably expecting it by this point. While I liked the emotions surrounding the situation, I just wasn't into it. I felt like it was forced and it was just trying to make me feel for these characters that I barely knew anything about, since the "getting to know the characters" portion was breezed through so fast. Plus there was so much time missing from the first part to the second part that it left you with questions you will never get answered.

It also drove me up a wall that the speeches were so...perfect. Yes, this is a Nicholas Sparks novel; I should be expecting this. But, why NOT have more realistic situations? There is no way that these characters' lives were so happy and problem free. There is no way that these characters could say the perfect thing at the perfect time. It just seemed cheesy and awkward. I would read the passages with a character giving a love speech and I would laugh to myself since there is no way in hell that would happen in real life. I JUST WANT REALISTIC, NOT PERFECT.

The epilogue was predictable as well. If you saw what was coming in the second part, you saw what was coming in the epilogue. Am I mad about it? No. But I just wish that I could have been surprised.