Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I tremendously enjoy Spark's books so I wish I had not added this one to my collection to taint the mix. I considered giving this a single star but out of respect for the obviously talented author and the character development of Dawson & Amanda, I begrudgingly gave it two. I have read this book before. The characters have had different names and are set in different times and places and were written by different authors but this story line was hardly original which is unfortunate because the two main characters, along with Tuck were believable for the most part. I agree with another reviewer that Dawson's perpetual fidelity was poignant but unrealistic; reminds me of a sad country song. Shades of John Tyree's touching altruism were revisited (Dear John) but to a much more painful degree which left me wanting something entirely different from the way the last half of the story was written. I was a bit aggravated when I suspected where the story was headed and skipped ahead to confirm my suspicions which is something I rarely do. Incidentally, I hope future offerings from Sparks will avoid the magical, mysterious, paranormal characters that have been lurking in the periphery of some of his more recent books. I find them a little contrived and distracting. I do appreciate that Mr. Spark's books are character driven and that his stories focus on human emotions rather than dragging the readers through a mire of profanity and meaningless copulation that so many of this genre fall to. I am looking forward to his next book but this one just didn't do it for me.