Not much of a Nicholas Sparks fan

Some reasons why the romance novels from Nicholas Sparks made it to our not-so-favoured list.

Our interest in Nicholas Sparks started with A Walk To Remember, of course! It may have been the age we read it but we liked everything about the book. So naturally, we picked up other Nicholas Sparks books. But we found that most of them just didn’t stick. And yes, if you’ve not guessed it by now, we aren’t crazy for The Notebook (the book or the movie!)

Here are some of the reasons his books made it to our not-so-favoured list:

#1 The characters are interchangeable. You know those characters that stay with you long after you finish the book, the ones you can recall days, weeks, months, years later? We couldn’t find them in Sparks’s books. Once you’ve read a few of the books, it’s difficult to make out the main characters from one book to another. The men and women in his books seem clones of each other with very minute distinctions, if any. Which is such a shame. What’s a book without a memorable character?

#2 The stories are interchangeable. It’s the same plot structure; set in an idyllic small town, a love-at-first-sight kind of romance with a typical tragic twist that the characters (who we’ve already established are the same) overcome mixed in with a good dose of cheesy moments and oftentimes, literally the same dialogues!

Don’t get us wrong, initially they made for pleasant reading, but a few books in, the patterns became so obvious that it’s difficult not to roll your eyes.

We’d love to hear what you guys think!