Photo Courtesy: Ashmita Kunwar

“Though I knew she loved and cared for me, I suddenly understood that even love and caring weren’t always enough. They were the concrete bricks of a relationship, but unstable without the mortar of time spent together.”

This is my preferred stanza in this book; I think it describes the reality of love in real life. I wonder from where he brings such combination of words that puts us in the illusion that everything described in the Novel is real and not a made up story. Love story like this is common but the combination of words, the style in which Nicholas Spark composes is different - unique and exasperatingly noble. But the ending is so depressing that I hate it. Reading his books is the best pastime for me at the moment.

John Tyree (the main character) leaves his school and joins the military force, an occupation he never thought he would end up doing.  But life happens. Nothing is fixed; the reality is far different than our imagination. During his school days he was a boy who never cognized the value of his father. He spent each day of his life doing nothing significant. Once he joins the military, his life changes unexpectedly. He later regrets his past immaturity and not being able to undo it at the present.  During his first vaccination, he falls in love with a girl named Savannah, from whom he learns how to forge the relationship with his father. The relationship was so deep that no matter what difficulties life would lead them to, both have imagined their future together in each other’s arms and lying beside each other. For John, Savannah means everything and for Savannah, John is the vigor to live her life. But, an unexpected letter from Savannah to her Dear John takes away every imagination they had dreamed of.  At the end, John gives up everything he has for the sake of her happiness, even though she leaves him for someone else.

This is just a tiny overview of the novel. There are more scenarios that make us take a dive into the story and feel everything from within. I like the way he narrates the story; gives us the feeling of existence of everything in reality. Romantic stories are common. But, Nicholas has a unique way of narrating the story. We cry at some point and also, feel the happiness, all from his writing. In fact, I cried a lot many times hiding my tears in front of my parents.  I was so stuck in the world of the Novel that my mother and brother threatened to take away the Kindle because I was spending too much time in it. I liked it a lot. I loved both the characters John and Savannah; especially John because of his commitment and his passion for Savannah.

At the end when John finds Savannah for the last time and the story was going in the negative direction where John could never have Savannah in his life, I was so annoyed with Spark. Why does he have to end with something like that? He breaks the heart of John and his readers but I think he wants to convey the truth of love. That is, love may not always be what you expect and not always fair to everyone.

I would complain that most of his Novels are like this, yet I like reading them. I am in the mission to complete most of his books, which I will be writing about in the coming days. Give a try, you might like it, just the way I did.