Thalia @ Pictures in the Words

Steadily, I’m becoming less and less impressed with Nicholas Sparks. I thought I couldn’t dislike a Sparks book more than I disliked The Notebook, but I was quickly proven wrong when reading Message in a Bottle. While this book didn’t tick me off nearly as much as the former did, at least The Notebook had some redeeming qualities, of which I found none in this novel. The plot was interesting enough, and started out with hope, but from the overly corny letters to the completely unhealthy relationship between Theresa and Garrett, everything just flopped. A lot. To top it off, Sparks isn’t even that great of a writer. It’s staccato, with abrupt dialogue and way too much tell-don’t-show on every page. It was a headache to read, and I rolled my eyes more than once, surprised that it could keep getting worse. Near the end, it almost found a weird kind of redemption, but even that fell in the end and I was stuck thinking about the pros of this book. As you can tell, I didn’t find much, if at all, that was redeeming.Even if I wasn’t a fan of “romance” novels (ie, the main couple feels the need to sleep with each other all the time), I don’t understand how anyone could like this book much anyway. There’s…nothing to like. It was boring, unemotional, unbelievable, and completely unrealistic. And it made me very unhappy.Read more?http://thaliasbooks.tumblr.com/post/44503572766/message-in-a-bottle-review