A Walk to Remember

A Walk to Remember is a touching story by Nicholas Sparks about first love and eye-opening realities. To Landon Carter, Jamie Sullivan was just a typical preacher's daughter: a God-loving, Bible carrying, happy robot. Soon, he's about to find out that there's more to Jamie that meets the eye. I came across this book when my friend recommended it to me and she said she loved it. After a while, I decided to give the book a chance and picked it up at the library!

The novel is told in the point of view of Landon Carter: a 17 year old son of a Congressman who pressures him to run for class president. Eric, Landon's best friend and the most popular boy in school, helps Landon win the election. When he finds out that he needs to find a date for a school dance, he asks girls he knows only to find out that they already have dates. Landon looks through his yearbook to find a decent date, and sees that he can ask Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of town's preacher. When he asks her, she said she'll go if he promises not to fall in love with her. Though he thought she was joking at the time, he promised anyway. After the dance, Jamie asked him to be a lead in her father's play. While they were working on the play and the events afterward, Landon realizes his true feelings for Jamie.

What I loved about the book is that it really shows Landon's feelings for Jamie transition from annoyance to love and adoration. It also gives you the good old Nicholas Sparks ending that gives you a chilling and paralyzed feeling, which means that you've just read a good book! However, I didn't love that Jamie gave her big news to Landon so unexpectedly; to me, it was just all of a sudden and it didn't quite give you enough clues as to what was wrong with her. Also, I didn't like that it was the cliche, "someone-important-is-going-to-die" story that you always seem to read in Nicholas Sparks books. Other than that, this book, in a way, changed my life; it taught me to give things another look before you give it a label. Well, to me, it felt that way. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good romance novel or any of Nicholas Sparks' books.