A Walk To Remember by Nicholas Sparks

3/5 Stars

The movie is one of my favorite Nicolas Sparks movie adaptations. I grew up with this sad and heart-wrenching love story and nearly 10 years after being introduced to it, I finally got around to reading the original story.

It kind of ruined my perception of the film because I realized how much material the producers or writers for that film just made up. Set in the late '50s, Landon is portrayed completely differently. Instead of a misunderstood, brooding, bad boy who seems to not have much of a future, Landon on paper knows where he wants to go to college and is on the student council. He seems to be an average student who just happens to join the bandwagon when it comes to poking fun at the pastor's daughter. This is just one example of a major difference between book and film.

To me, it felt almost like a completely different story with only the major plot points in common so I'm not sure if I can even compare the two to deem which I prefer.

This was also my first Nicolas Sparks novel and since there is so much hype around his writing I was expecting something amazingly well written, but the writing was extremely basic. I honestly think the YA novels I used to read in middle school were written with more 'pizzaz' than this. I think that the whole whirlwind romance of Jamie and Landon is really what carried this novel because the writing was literally so basic but it wasn't unbearable. I also felt it was a tiny bit rushed considering it is a 215-page novel that I finished in 4 hours.

I would 100% recommend the novel to anyone who has or hasn't seen the movie, given the fact that they are so different. That being said, I did truly enjoy it because it was so different. It was unpredictable when I had thought I knew exactly what was going to come. I honestly couldn't put it down.