brixtonbang

Well, I'm disappointed with this book. For starters, there are just some really creepy characters in here (and there were in the last several of his newest books, he didn't used to do that with his older stuff) and then whenever you read about them, it's from their POV as all characters in Nicholas Sparks books you know all of their POV's. I just didn't like being in the head of real low-life, creepy, criminal bad people and some major horrible violence. If I want a criminal mind sort of book (that's also filled with some awful violence), I will go find one, I just didn't expect that from Nicholas Sparks. I feel like his style of stories has changed...he has added really intense conflict that is not your typical nice, fluffy, romance book type of conflict that he has had in the past... I have major spoilers below, please scroll: I'm really disappointed in the main character, Amanda. I felt like she was just a fence sitter on making decisions. She was totally asking for Dawson to love her and basically soliciting it, the fact that she wouldn't deliver, bothered me. I don't agree about married people cheating on each other, but heck, she was looking for it, and asking for it, and then backs off at the last second. When she's leaving town she ::wants:: to go back to Dawson, but at the last second, she doesn't. Either fully cheat, and go for it, or don't. She fully solicits for past love and emotion to come back up and then she won't face it and all of a sudden has responsibilities. Poor Dawson! She just leads him on, and especially when she knows he has only loved her and never dated anyone again 25 years later... It just bugged me that she leads him on, then didn't fully sleep with him, in her mind, she didn't cheat....um not in my opinion. She totally cheated. It just bugged me. And we all knew she should have chosen Dawson. Also, I knew since the cousins of Dawson wanted to kill him, that they prolly would succeed. The second I read that Amanda's son was in a car accident, I knew somehow Dawson would help her... then when I read that the boy needed a heart transplant, I was like, okay, Dawson dies and it will be his heart, and it fully was. No surprise twist there. Come on, Nicholas Sparks, usually you throw in twists we can guess, this one was so obvious! I was also disappointed that Amanda would stay in a pretty much love-less marriage after all she had been through with Dawson. She had already told Frank she was leaving him, and then she decides she wants to stay out of convenience. Sure, she claims it's so her son would recover better, but I disagree that someone should stay in an awful marriage that's horribly damaged for the sake of a 19 yr old child/adult... the whole thing bugged me, and then Amanda just seemed fine that Dawson died and like life would go on for her.... I feel like if she ::really:: loved him, she would have been much more damaged and had major grief and thought about him a lot. In the relationship between Amanda and Dawson, ::clearly:: he loved her FAR more than she loved him back. It didn't make for that great of a love story to me, because of that. Usually the people in Nicholas Sparks love stories, they have amazing love stories. Amanda just lives in the moment and does what is most convenient for her at the moment. She doesn't think much for her future. Lame. Made me just be completely annoyed by that character and not even like her. The paranormal stuff has been creeping into several of the latest novel's from Nicholas Sparks as well, and it has bugged me. I feel like he can then make his books take any twist and almost makes for unfair plot twists. The paranormal in this book was more believable, but it was not my favorite. And I fully knew from early on that the paranormal was Mr. Bonner. I might actually just delete this book from my kindle. I will ::never:: read it again. Hated the violence, hated the criminal/low life characters, hated the main character didn't know love when it knocked her in the head, twice, for that matter.... Disappointing. I may not read any more Nicholas Sparks books after this. He usually comes out with one a year, but I think I'm done now.

2022-11-14 13:50