Amazing Author

Many years ago, one of my dearest friends gave me a book for my birthday. I read it start to finish without ever putting it down and loved every word of it. It was called "The Notebook" by Nicholas Sparks. I thought he was a new favorite author of mine, but amazingly, since then I have not read another. Message in a Bottle was released on film, The Notebook was made into a movie, and now Nights in Rodanthe has been released. I have never seen any of the movies because I didn't want to ruin the book...I like to read it before seeing the movie...and since I've not read any of the books... Well, I happen to have Nights in Rodanthe here at the house...given by another friend. So, I read it last weekend. Saturday night and Sunday night after the kids went to bed. I have to say...don't watch the movie...read the book! Just based on the trailer and movie reviews, they have changed so much of the story line in the movie that it is not the same story, in my opinion. But, there is a passage that I am going to write a little here that just makes me think that Nicholas Sparks crawled into my brain and wrote exactly how I feel about this whole situation...

(First, in the movie, apparently she is not yet divorced, but in the book she has been divorced about 3 years before this weekend happened...a big difference in my opinion).

"Two days ago, she couldn't have imagined this sort of thing happening to her. Nor could she have imagined that she'd be feeling this way about anyone, let alone someone she'd just met. Her life didn't allow for such things, not lately, anyway. It was easy to blame the kids or tell herself that her responsibilities didn't leave enough time for something like this, but that wasn't completely true. It also had to do with who she'd become in the aftermath of her divorce.

Yes, she felt betrayed and angry at Jack (her ex-husband); everyone could understand those things. But being left for someone else carried other implications, and as much as she tried not to dwell on them, there were times when she couldn't help it. Jack had rejected her, he'd rejected the life they had lived together; it was a devastating blow to her as a wife and mother, but also as a woman. Even if, as he'd claimed, he hadn't planned on falling in love with Linda and that it had just happened, it wasn't as if he simply rode the wave of emotions without making conscious decisions along the way. He had to have thought about what he was doing, he had to have considered the possibilities when he started spending time with Linda. And no matter how much he tried to soft-pedal what had happened, it was as if he'd told Adrienne (the main character)not only that Linda was better in every way, but that Adrienne wasn't even worth the time and effort it would take to fix whatever it was he thought was wrong with their relationship.

How was she supposed to react to that sort of total rejection? It was easy for others to say that it had nothing to do with her, that Jack was going through a midlife crisis, but it still had an effect on the person she thought she was."

While it doesn't portray the same exact type of scenario, the feelings and thoughts are so vivid and similar to mine that I couldn't describe it better myself.