Name: The Notebook
Rating: 3.819393592677346 (874 reviews)
ISBN: 9780553816716

Nicholas Sparks

The Notebook

Milan Joseph

this is the best romantic novel ive ever read. and i don't know why it's not in the top lists

Deepika Ramesh

I haven't watched the movie yet. As always, I chose to read it first. But, the book didn't work for me. :( And, I don't think I would watch the movie too unless it is WAY different from the book.

Ipshita Kanungo

I liked how this was much calmer and sweeter than the movie's relationship. But it was pretty slow-paced and boring. I enjoyed the present-day Noah and Allie much more, and I would've liked to see their relationship as teenagers (as this is never shown, only looked back on). The last ten pages actually were really sad, and I teared up at the end. Have mercy. 

Sarah Campbell

this book was good but i was comparing it to the movie the whole time which i think did it a disservice. i loved the backstory included in the movie and that wasn’t a part of the book which i was a bit disappointed about. it was definitely a good book but this is definitely one of those rare circumstances where the movie adaptation is better. 

Emilia Vulliamy

Love this story! A very quick read but I constantly compared it to the movie because I’ve seen it a couple times. 

lucy lou

Ainhoa Marcos Camps

I was a bit ashamed of myself, as a lover of romance novels and movies, for not having read The Notebook yet. I love the movie, its sappiness and clichés, the drama, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams hating each other and then falling in love, everything. So I thought that it was about time, and I read the book.

The Notebook is one of the few exceptions to the established rule of every reader: the book is always better than the movie. It is really not. 
Noah and Allie barely have any personality throughout the book. Nicholas Sparks doesn't spend any time in the summer when they were young and fell in love, so you as a reader try to fill the gaps with the movie, which doesn't work. First, beause it's the writer's job to give you enough information so you don't have to (or to make you not care about what you are missing). But here we are talking about the foundations of a love that lasts almost 10 fucking years without communication, so, yeah, it's kind of important. Second, it doesn't work because the characters in the movie feel human, imperfect, with personality, alive, so when you try to connect those versions with the ones on the book, something's missing.

The highlight of the book is the final part, the last 30 pages or so that depict Allie's alzheimer and Noah's feelings about their situation. It's written thinking about making the reader cry, and you do. Oh, you really really do. If that's good writing or manipulative writing, up to you. 

It's not a bad book. It's short, straight to the point. Two old flames from their teen years reconcile in their late-twenties, and then we jump to their old age, where they die together (I won't consider this a spoiler becuase if you don't know what The Notebook is about or how it ends, you must have been living under a rock for the past 15 years). There's fewer references to God and religion than I expected, knowing Sparks' writing, and it's not too preachy. At the same time, and as I said before, Noah and Allie have no personality or whatsoever. We get told over and over that Allie is hot-headed and impatient but we don't ever see it in the way she acts. The same goes for Noah who doesn't show any anger (or any other emotion) over the lost years or towards Allie going back to her fiancé. 

It was going to be a 2 star for me, but the last 30 pages, even if manipulative, made me change it to 3. What can I say, I'm a sucker for old people still loving each other trough anything, even Alzheimer's.

Marisel 

I needed the relief of a beach read, so I picked this up. My daughter laughed at this as my version of light reading, because she had seen the movie and knew that the setting was somewhat tragic As it turns out, I wasn’t at all wrong, not really. It is a sweet novel about love and loyalty. It’ll definitely let you shed a tear or two. Sweet. The beginning is very powerful, and much stronger than the end, so I wasn’t at all surprised to find out that the author the it as the ending, then switched them. It was a good decision, since upon reading it one is immediately drawn in and caught. If he had chosen to start the book with what is now the end chapter (and was or originally meant to be the first) I don’t think I would have gone on reading. The middle is basically a bunch of predictable romantic fluff with some sizzling sexy moments thrown a la soft harlequin romance. Good for a beach day.

Eva Idsøe

The book is intresing
It is a classic romance with a not so classic twist.
Noah and Allie have met a summer when they were young. 14 years later they meet once again.

Missy Zuber 

Dull and did not hold my interests, but then again neither does the overrated movie version.

First Nicholas Sparks book I've read.

Bea R.

“..but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough”

Cassidy

This novel was really good, but it didn't have that extra icing on the top that I was craving It's unusual that I like a movie better than the book, but in this
 case I did.

How far can love endure? Noah Calhoun has just returned from World War Two. Attempting to escape the ghosts of battle, he tries to concentrate on restoring an old plantation home to its former glory. And yet he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met there fourteen years before, a girl who captured his heart like no other. But when these distant memories begin to slide into reality, the passion that had lain still is ignited once more. Though so much is in their way, the miraculous force of their love refuses to fade.

Sara Hakkoum

Meh... the movie's better.
I really liked the way Nicholas wrote The Last Song, and this is kinda different. I didn't enjoy it much.

The Notebook

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