Average Couple with Above Average Love

Nicholas Sparks is one of my favorite writers, in spite of the fact that his books usually depress me. There is often some tragedy in the book, and his books sometimes don’t end the way you would like them to, but there is always some deep meaning behind the ending, and there is always a sense of true love. Not just romantic happy thrilling love, but the kind of love that is so deep that someone is willing to sacrifice their own feelings for someone else that they love. Nicholas Sparks manages to capture love at it its most beautiful and its most painful moments.

The most recent book I have read by Nicholas Sparks is The Choice.

The Choice - The Plot

Travis a bachelor but all of his friends are married, with Children, all except for his sister. Travis spends many a night with his best friends and their wives and children, and in many ways he envies what they have. Travis has had plenty of girlfriends but none of them were really all that special to him, and non of them really had staying power.

Gabby recently moved next door to Travis. Gabby is a doctor's assistant who has been dating her boyfriend Kevin for some time, but their relationship doesn't seem to be going anywhere. When Gabby suspects that her dog Molly has been impregnated by Travis's dog Moby, she decides to go over and give her new neighbor of piece of her mind. While Gabby is trying to vent her anger her handsome neighbor seems to fluster her and in return Travis is captivated by his angry neighbor as well.

The two become friends and begin to fall for each other which leaves Gabby with a choice. Does she stay with her boyfriend Kevin and forget all about her handsome neighbor and the butterflies she feels for him. Or does she end her long term relationship with Kevin to be with the tempting Travis.

Eventually you reach a point in the book where you realize that everything you have read is past tense. The book suddenly fast forwards to present day, and the book that started out as the story of a whirlwind romance and very much like a typical romance novel, takes on a more serious tone.

The second portion of the book is about the after affects of a tragedy,and briefly scans the lives of Travis and Gabby from the time that they met up until the present this section of the book completely changes the book from a light fun love story to a more serious and sad one.

My Thoughts

Although the book starts out pretty slow, and actually kind of reads like the day in the life many average people, even the meeting of Travis and Gabby is somewhat average it is still enjoyable.

Despite the average beginning the book is well written and the tragedy is quite sad but I honestly found myself wanting to skip ahead during the second part of the book. I found myself wanting to know the ending and I started to get a little frustrated with all the mundane details, and pages and pages, seemed with filler keeping me from getting to the end. At one point I thought I had the end figured out, but it actually didn't turn out as I thought it was going to.

There was a short portion of the book that was agonizing fluff. The ending was nicely done, even thought it came out differently than I thought it would. To be honest I kind of had a pre-conceived notion about it from the beginning.

This is not one of the those books that you can’t put down, it is not exiting from end to end, there are definitely some slow parts, but that is true to life.

Many of us who have truly found love didn’t have abounding excitement every moment we were together, there were definitely wonderful moments and wonderful feelings, but chances are we felt all that while doing normal everyday things, and under normal dating circumstances. Travis and Gabby were normal people, who had a normal romance, and a deep love that everyone deserves to have. This is what makes this book a nice read.