Connie's Reviews > Dear John

Dear Nicholas Sparks,

I really do not want to like you. I was all happy living in my somewhat snobby literary world where I turned my nose up at your novels. So many people love you and gush over your books. I would either bite my tongue to prevent myself from voicing my superior opinion because I was trying to be the good non-biased readers' advisory librarian; or if my friends were all gaga I would roll my eyes and talk about what good literature really is.

Yeah, well, then I saw a kick ass preview from a movie that is coming out in February based on one of your books, Dear John. My infatuation with this preview was due to Channing Tatum, which dear God I just cannot help myself - I totally love, and the song Set Fire to the Third Bar by Snow Patrol. It looked like a fabulous heart-wrenching romance - my favorite kind. I couldn't get that preview out of my head and sometimes I would find it online to watch it (yes, I know, so pathetic). Then my coworker said she loved the preview too and decided to read it, and liked it. Despite the fact that I have ssoooo many other things I need to be reading, YA lit mostly, I thought, oh what the hell, why not?

How do you do it? How do you write so simply and honest and yet so incredibly gut and heart wrenching? How is it, that you of all people, write my favorite kind of romance? The not always happy ending, bittersweet - the tragedy of love. The kind where I have one hand holding the book and the other one clutching my heart because you are slowly scraping at it trying to mangle it and in order to keep breathing so I can finish your damn book, I have to try and hold my heart together. You're killing me. What I want to know is, are there men out there really like John Tyree? I know most women wonder if the men in romance novels really exist or want them to exist so badly that they live in a false reality or read them because they are bitter and believe that no man exists like that. But mostly women write romance and they create the men we want. But you are a man. Do you still create men that you think women will want because you know it will sell or is some bit of honesty in the way you portray your men? Am I allowed to hope that honorable men exist and that there is a possibility of finding one?

I've decided to try and keep hope alive and just go with there are very honest honorable men out there who are capable of sensitivity, true love and passion. So now, I'm so very glad and yet so very sorry to report that I am a fan of yours, even if I don't freely admit it. I need to keep some semblance of snobbery intact, at least for show. So thank you, thank you for giving a tragic romantic a good cry on a Friday afternoon and for also giving her hope and helping her to clearly etch out the man she wishes to be with someday.

your new reluctantly adoring fan,

Connie