Sequel to 'The Notebook' maintains romance

The movie adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' novel "The Notebook" has brought a lot of recent attention to his writing and the story's main characters, Allie and Noah.\nIn "The Wedding," Sparks reintroduces the romance of the two by making Noah a secondary character. The story takes place years after Allie's death, when Noah has begun to show his age and has suffered more strokes and other related injuries. \nJane, one of Noah's daughters, has been married for 31 years and suffers from an unromantic and uninvolved husband who has dedicated his life to his law career. Paradoxically, the story is written not from the perspective of Jane, but from her husband, Wilson, who after completely forgetting their 29th anniversary, realizes what a defunct father and partner he has been.\nAlthough the story culminates in romantic moments full of ideal gestures of love, the first half of the novel moves very slowly. \nLike the novel before it, "The Wedding" begins with a question of identity and the insecurity of the future. The parallels between the novels occurs immediately in the opening . \nWhereas Noah and Allie's stories contained love triumphing family barriers, world wars and fatal diseases of the mind and body, the story of Jane and Wilson has no mystery to draw the readers in. \nThere are other inconsistencies in the narrative voice as well. There is a distinct change between the voices from the first novel to this, what could be called, sequel. Since there are a few years between the publication of the novels, a small difference is expected. \nYet some of the detailed descriptions of small actions or beautiful landscapes, which flowed from "The Notebook," seem forced. There are awkward sentences and details that appear to only be half-way completed.\n"The Wedding," if it were to stand alone without the connections to Noah and Allie, tells the heartwarming story of a well-intentioned man who realizes his wife might no longer be in love with him. Rather than giving up, he decides to change himself by focusing not on the problems in his marriage, but on his wife as if he were courting her again. \nThere are lovely recounts of memories of their first dates and first epiphanies of love, and the story builds in such a way that even though readers might be able to predict part of the plot, they cannot predict the beautiful resolution of the book, which adds a surprising twist in the last 10 pages.\nThe novel is short (only 263 pages) and makes a quick romantic read for both men and women. The novel even seems to be better fitted for men since it is written from the perspective of man trying to save his relationship. \nSparks definitively continues to be an expert writer on issues of the heart and overcoming seemingly impossible barriers. If you are looking for a little extra romance, "The Wedding" is a perfect read.