Adult Readers Advisory: Kirkus-Style Review of "The Choice"

The Choice

By Nicholas Sparks

Pub Date: September 2007

Page Count: 272pp

ISBN: 978-0-446-57992-6

Publisher: Hachette

A woman must make a tough choice about which man she will spend her life with. Years later, the man she chooses must make an even more difficult decision.

Sparks continues his string of weepy love stories with this book, about next-door neighbors Travis Parker and Gabby Holland and the tough choices they must make through friendship, courtship, and marriage. Two-thirds of the book shows readers how Travis and Gabby fall in love during one long weekend when Gabby’s boyfriend is out of town. Their whirlwind courtship is described in excruciating detail; the book includes trite conversations about nothing in particular, paragraphs describing mundane things, and more than one discussion about Travis’ preference for eating chicken over red meat. Even an interesting, morally sticky, and much more consequential choice of the last section of the book is overshadowed by long-winded passages full of dull details as Travis reflects on his mostly unremarkable marriage to Gabby in their picture-perfect house with their two adorable children. The fact that Travis and Gabby are the worst sort of stock characters - the laid-back man who lives life to the fullest and the overly emotional woman afraid to truly live - only makes the book more tedious to read. Sparks also, as usual, pads the book with pages of description of the beauty of the South and the charms of small-town living in monotonous prose.

A lifeless love story that will, nonetheless, have Sparks fans reaching for their Kleenex.