At First
Sight
by Nicholas Sparks
Paperback, 288 pages
Published on: September 5th 2006 (first published January 1st 2004)
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 0446698466
But just as everything seems to be
settling into a blissful pattern, a mysterious e-mail sets off a chain of
events that will test the strength of their commitment. Capturing all the
heartbreak, tension, and romance of the newlyweds, AT FIRST SIGHT explores the
love between a man and a woman and between a parent and a child-and reveals an
extraordinary truth: that the emotion that can break your heart is sometimes
the very one that heals it...
Being a great Nicholas
Sparks fan, I picked this one after reading his wonderful books like A Bend in
the Road and The
Notebook. But At First Sight proved to be an entirely different
book from these. This one deals with the struggles of relationships, small town
life, fears of the future, love, and getting to know your partner.
Does love at first
sight really exist? The story of Jeremy Marsh and Lexie Darnell proves that
this is startlingly possible. Sparks was able to beautifully portray the heart
wrenching tale of Jeremy and Lexie’s love and lives with each other.
The plot was realistic
enough. I liked the way it showed the way people believed in things that are
beyond logic. The blocks of Jeremy as a writer are wonderfully dealt with. It
shows how you need to adjust with a partner after falling in love with him.
Falling in love is just the beginning, living it is the hard job. The way
Jermey and Lexie smoothen out their rough edges with care, affection and love
is laudable.
I don’t like romance
much but I fall in love with the characters in Sparks’s books usually. It is
not surprising that people make Facebook pages like ‘I wish Nicholas Sparks
created a boyfriend for me too’ or ‘I am hurt because Nicholas Sparks made me expect
so much from my boyfriend’. Sparks has the power to keep the reader
engaged till the last word of the book. And he does it through his brilliant
characterization. But in the case of At First Sight,
I was disappointed.
The characters were
not that great. At times, they did dumb things. Jeremy was a total bore. He was
not at all like Noah or Miles Ryan or Landon Carter or Paul. He was shown as
just another failed love struck writer who flies over to Boone Creek for stupid
reasons too big for him, worries a lot and over thinks everything. Lexie isn't
Sparks' best character either. She acted like a child and I loathed her. She
was selfish, mean and a liar.
The book also had too
many secondary characters. This is not always a bad thing, but this one had too
many with insignificant roles, and this made them hard to keep in mind. The
book was supposed to be a romance novel but I could see nothing of it in the
entire book until some pages towards the end. Throughout the rest of the text,
it read like a tale of Jeremy’s frustration and Lexie’s absurdity.
There was an awful lot
of mundane, routine, everyday stuff that goes on all the time and wasn't all
that interesting. I turned on to the next pages pinning my faith into Nicholas
Sparks that he’d give me the real story after that page.
The last quarter of
this story is the best part of the book, as it portrays raw emotions and
feelings with Jeremy's and Lexie's struggles as they face a life changing
event. I would have given this book a C if it had not been this ending.
If you like sad and
heart breaking endings, read it. If you are looking for hardcore romance, try
his other books instead.
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