The Notebook: Summary and book reviews of The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks, plus links to an excerpt from The Notebook and a biography of Nicholas Sparks.

A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn't understand. Until he begins to read to her. The Notebook is an achingly tender story about the enduring power of love, a story of miracles that will stay with you forever. Set amid the austere beauty of coastal North Carolina in 1946, The Notebook begins with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner returned home from World War II. Noah, thirty-one, is restoring a plantation home to its former glory, and he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met fourteen years earlier, a girl he loved like no other. Unable to find her, yet unwilling to forget the summer they spent together, Noah is content to live with only memories...until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him once again. Allie Nelson, twenty-nine, is now engaged to another man, but realizes that the original passion she felt for Noah has not dimmed with the passage of time. Still, the obstacles that once ended their previous relationship remain, and the gulf between their worlds is too vast to ignore. With her impending marriage only weeks away, Allie is forced to confront her hopes and dreams for the future, a future that only she can shape. Like a puzzle within a puzzle, the story of Noah and Allie is just the beginning. As it unfolds, their tale miraculously becomes something different, with much higher stakes. The result is a deeply moving portrait of love itself, the tender moments and the fundamental changes that affect us all. Shining with a beauty that is rarely found in current literature, The Notebook establishes Nicholas Sparks as a classic storyteller with a unique insight into the only emotion that really matters. "I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough." And so begins one of the most poignant and compelling love stories you will ever read...The Notebook

Media Reviews

Kirkus Reviews Sparks's debut is a contender in the Robert Waller book sweeps for most shamelessly sentimental love story, with honorable mention for highest octane schmaltz throughout an extended narrative.....An epic of treacle, an ocean of tears, made possible by a perfect, ideal, unalloyed absence of humor. Destined, positively, for success.   Booklist - Joanne Wilkinson If you want to read a novel in which the romance is grounded in something real, and the magic is truly magical, read the work of Alice Hoffman. If you want to read an upscale Harlequin romance with great crossover appeal, then read The Notebook.   Publishers Weekly Early on, Noah claims that theirs may be either a tragedy or a love story, depending on the perspective. Ultimately, the judgment is up to readers be they cynics or romantics. For the latter, this will be a weeper.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Erin
A Beautiful Love Story
The Notebook is an enchanting love story that's impossible to put down. It gives all women a sense of a fairy tale and what real love can be. It was an incredible book written with beautiful emotion.

Rated of 5 by isobelle
awesome
This book sweeps me off my feet. I can't imagine how Nicholas Sparks created this story through his imagination. The characters are the "best". The words he uses and the emotions are so real.

Rated of 5 by Jacinda
The Notebook Review
The notebook is a love story by Nicholas Sparks. It’s told in many different ways; when they are old, teenagers, and in their 30’s. It’s about a young girl named Allie, who comes from a very wealthy, and some would say stuck up, family who falls in...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Sarah Marie
Real Treat! (:
I love this book ! It was unbelievably good! Nicholas Sparks knows how to pull on his readers emotions. i end up the same way for all his books, crying. he has great talent and i hope that he doesn't give up on his AMAZING talent. KEEP WRITING...   Read More

Rated of 5 by number1
The Notebook
This book is one you can not put down. It is based on a man reading a journal to his wife who has Alzheimers. It is about their love story but she does not know it. It is a romantic, heart wrenching story that you will need a box of tissues for. I...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Juju Y
The Notebook
I first read the book and was eager to watch the movie. To my surprise it was as good as it was written. It breaks my heart every time I read or watch, it and I did not fail to cry. I have read and watched it countless times. It's like a written...   Read More

...115 More Reader Reviews

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Books with similar themes

• Love Stories
  
• USA 
  
• South 
  
• N & S Carolina 
  
• 1940s & '50s 
  
• 1st Books/1st Novels