My 7 Favourite Nicholas Sparks Novels

Picking my top seven favourite Nicholas Sparks novels was literally one of the hardest things I have ever done. It should be known that the novels not mentioned were obviously all close to being in my top seven as I often changed my mind! There may be what you consider spoilers in this so do not read on if you haven't read the magic of these novels. I seriously spent time scratching my head and wanting to cry but here you go!

1. The Lucky One is based around Logan and his search for a girl that he believes saved his life as well as his life when he found her. I love The Lucky One because Logan is probably my joint favourite Nicholas Sparks male character. He is so caring and sweet and when I finished the novel I had to remind my self he's not real. Yes he's perfect, but he's not real. Beth is so strong but vulnerable, that these two together made my favourite novel that I return to if I have nothing to read. It is the perfect love story.

2. Safe Haven, a very gripping novel about the beautiful Katie overcoming her ex and finding peace with the lovely Alex never fails to have me up throughout a night reading. I have already raved about before: http://thegirlinthemoonlight.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/safe-haven.html and I just love Alex (my joint first favourite).

3. A Walk To Remember, I read in a night because I was so gripped with the characters of Jamie and Landon. The fact that they were polar opposites and yet their relationship was so fairy-tale-like gave me those goosebumps that can only be produced from books. I love how, when reading it, you see Landon change in front of you and how his love is so big for the lovely and selfless Jamie. "You have to promise you won't fall in love with me." When I first read Jamie saying this, I knew Nicholas Sparks was going to make my heart weep, and I thank him for it because this novel is just fantastic.

4. The Choice has to be in my top seven because I love the development of the characters in this novel. I fall in love with each male character in Nicholas Sparks novels too quickly, but I love Travis for different reasons. I love him for how he is with his friends as well as how lovely he is to Gabby, his neighbour who didn't return it straight away but yet he was still somewhat besotted with her, at first not knowing why. Reading the change in Gabby was incredibly sweet as, in her eyes Travis went from being someone who "knew" he was "really good-looking" from her being able to "imagine spending the rest of [her] life with [him]" and that's what makes this novel perfect to me.

5. Best of Me is heart-breakingly beautiful, not only because two teenage sweethearts regretfully went their separate ways, but because of the moral, yet incredibly needed ending. I loved the book so much that I wrote a song about it because, out of all of Nicholas Sparks' novels, Best of Me touched me in a really different and solemn way.

6. Message in a Bottle is based around Theresa Osborne, a journalist who becomes interested in a charming, but heart-breaking love story from a letter that washed up onto a beach in a bottle. I love this novel because I feel like the two main characters, Theresa and the lovely Garrett find some kind of calmness after overcoming events that happened before in their lives. Garrett, to me is charming and sweet and his troubles with moving on from Catherine make it all the more tragically beautiful.

7. True Believer really is joint sixth because I could not choose between this and Message in a Bottle. This novel is just an endearing and lovely story about a seemingly "cynical" man, Jeremy and one of my favourite of Nicholas Sparks' female characters, Lexie. She is so seemingly strong and independent that when her walls break down - so to speak - she becomes even more awesome. There's something about the way Nicholas Sparks presents small towns and even how some of his characters resent characteristics of them that makes me want to live in one all the more and this novel certainly captures why I do so much! The ending to this novel is my favourite ending ever...I genuinely was in tears for an hour.

Dear Nicholas Sparks,

Please can you write me my story?

x

Books & Hot Chocolate,

The Girl in the Moonlight.

Safe Haven

BEFORE SEEING THE FILM AT THE CINEMA.

I love Nicholas Sparks novels for so many reasons: the perfect characters; the beautiful feelings and actions of the characters; the obstacles the characters overcome; the moral and sometimes maybe-not-what-everyone-stereotypically-wanted endings. Safe Haven, I love for the perfect characters and heart-breaking pasts that still haunt them but I also adore the novel for the thrill.

At parts, the pace of the novel literally made my heart pound faster, fearing for the characters that I love oh so much; so lost in the plot that I may as well be alongside them. Like every other Nicholas Sparks novel, "I could not put it down" and with Safe Haven, it was definitely because of the thriller aspect of it - and, of course the perfect characters of Katie and Alex.

I fall for the male love interests in Nicholas Sparks novels every time; there'd be no point trying not to. Alex, the man in Safe Haven, I love for the way he loves Katie as well as his late wife, Carly. His deep love for his children, however is what made me fall deeply and unconditionally for Alex. It's just too sweet for my heart to take. The main characters that are fathers in Nicholas Sparks novels are always perfect and I always note, after reading a charmingly constructed part of the character's view and love of their children that it must exist due to it reflecting how much of an awesome dad Nicholas Sparks is. I genuinely don't doubt that.

I have been raving about this novel since I read it over two years ago and, like every time a Nicholas Sparks novel is adapted into a film, I have rosy cheeks and the thought of seeing the film.

Love hurts. There is nothing as painful as heartbreak. But in order to learn to love again you must learn to trust again.

AFTER WATCHING THE FILM. 03:57 IN THE MORNING.

The cast, as it is for every Nicholas Sparks adapted film, I knew would be perfect, and sat, popcorn and sweets spread before me, I knew my love for Josh Duhamel would cause me to comfort eat to the max and oh my, it did.

The film was sweet but bitter, calming yet heart-pounding. You get the oxymoron-based picture I'm painting for you, right? My emotions were on that "roller-coaster ride" you often hear about during those two hours and I haven't yet stepped off of it.

Another thing that I adore about books written by the brilliant Nicholas Sparks is that way he sets the scene: "Lilies sprouted amid the wild grass in what once was a flower bed..." and the film adaption of Safe Haven gave me chills with the beautiful beach and the area surrounding Katie's home. Even the roads in the neighbourhood had something so homely-small-town about them. Absolutely stunning. Do you know what made the scenery even more perfect? Josh Duhamel.

The characters matched my imagination when reading the novel and this makes me incredibly happy. Alex was passionate and sweet and Katie was damaged yet, at the same time that female hero that made me be full of that strong-woman mentality. Cobie Smulders? She was just incredible.

Like the novel, I was lost in the film and the romance as well as the tension beneath the love and beauty that ended with explosions in my eyes.

HERE is the trailer for the film.

Bikes & Photos

The Girl in the Moonlight.