THE NOTEBOOK

"Somewhere," muses Noah Calhoun, while sitting on his porch in the moonight, "there were people making love." The Notebook, a Southern-fried story of love-lost-and-found-again, revolves around a single time-honored romantic dilemma: will beautiful Allison Nelson stay with Mr. Respectability (to whom she happens to be engaged), or will she hook up with Noah, the romantic rascal she left so many years ago? We're not telling, but you have two guesses and the first one doesn't count. Decades later, after Allison develops Alzheimer's, her beau uses "the notebook" to read her the story of the great love she's plumb forgot.

I think watching the movie first and so many times made this book difficult for me. I kept comparing the characters and how different they are. I appreciate the characters more in the book than in the movie because the book captures their pure and everlasting love. In the movie I always felt the relationship to be dysfunctional and wondered why Allie was so drawn to Noah after being engaged to such a great guy. Now seeing the story through Nicholas Sparks eyes I can understand. This was a good book, I just wish he had gone into more detail of their years together.