When The Jacket Cover Is Far More Interesting Than What's Inside!!!

Nicholas Sparks would be a great idea for a pen name. If I didn't know better, I might think some housewife writing women's romances decided to adopt a male pen name, complete with hunky 8x5 author's back photo too, to reel in and make the female readers swoon.

Of course, that isn't the case. Nicholas Sparks is a real guy who writes these gushy romances that read like they are straight out of Harlequin. --Definitely my kind of stuff. And, since this is the season when the whole world falls in love, anyone attracted to romantic love stories could be captivated.

Unfortunately, however, there are lot of undeveloped threads, running through "Nights In Rodanthe" in addition to weak characterizations and a plot full of external events that seemed contrived and thrown-in.

PLOT: Adrienne Willis a middle-aged divorcee abandoned by her husband for a younger woman, meets middle-aged Paul Flanner, a successful plastic surgeon whose wife, Martha, just left him.

They have a 5-day affair at a charming inn at sea-side Rodanthe, North Carolina.

This is a chance meeting and there are no other Inn guests, as this is the Winter and there is a harsh storm brewing. The Inn Keeper, Jean, and Adrienne are pals, and Jean asked Adrienne to look after the Inn, and the Inn's one guest, Paul, while Inkeeper Jean left town for a while.

Yeah, Adrienne certainly looks after Paul all right.

Anyway, these two lost souls with lots of middle-age emotional baggage have a once-in-a-lifetime whirlwind romance, amidst the power outages, thunder and lightening that batter North Carolina coast during the severe Winter. The 5-day-affair is life-changing for Paul and Adrienne.

NAGGING QUESTIONS: I have no problem with the swirling, dreamy romance part of "Nights In Rodanthe", or the love-at-first-sight aspect of the novel. As I say, I used to devour Harlequin and Silhouette romances by the truckful so sappy romance is my thing.

It's everything else going on here. Such as, who are Paul Flanner and Adrienne Willis, individually as people, apart from their high-intensity romance?

Why would Paul Flanner throw away an exclusive plastic surgery practice to go practice medicine in the wilds of Equador where he was on his way to before stopping at the Inn at Rodanthe? Sparks expects the reader to believe that a wealthy plastic surgeon just chucks everything without much soul-searching.

And why did Paul's wife, Martha, just walk out on him? Sparks writes that Paul was married to his job. Nevertheless most women, I would think, wouldn't mind their husband's work, especially when it's something as prestigious as plastic surgery.

(SPOILERS-- SKIP THESE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS IF YOU KNOW YOU ARE GOING TO READ THIS NOVEL)

DISGRUNTLED EX-PATIENT: One of Paul's patients dies and the widowed husband sues Paul for malpractice and wrongful death. This is a thread that is never played out. The disgruntled widower with an ax-to-grind against Paul seeks out Plastic Surgeon Paul, at the Inn, interrupting his tryst with Adrienne......with a gun, maybe?

No. Robert Torrelson, the bitter widower who feels Dr. Paul Flanner killed his wife after doing her cosmetic surgery, simply wants to relay how his wife's last words were how she was going into surgery to look pretty for the husband. Torrelson, the disgrunted husband, quietly leaves the Inn. So much for suspense, revenge, and retaliation.

LACKLUSTER CHARACTERS: In his effort to create universal characters, Sparks succeeds in giving his characters nothing but a general blandness. What I mean is Sparks's characters in "Nights" are not the least bit quirky, offbeat, eccentric, or flamboyant.

Give a character some sort of nervous habit, tick, wicked cough, anything to make them unique and interesting, as opposed to a general WASPY blandness that Nicholas Sparks's characters all seem to embody in his novels.

DRAGGING OUT A STORY BY USING FILLER: Under the FAQ's section of Nicholas Sparks website, www.nicholassparks.com , Sparks admits he had some 25 pages or so of manuscript to go before he revealed what ends up happening to Paul Flanner....that invariably dooms Paul and Adrienne's romance by the end of the novel.

So he filled these pages with mundane details like how Adrienne spends her daily chores and daily drudgery of her life after her affair with Paul.

An author shouldn't have to fill a book with mindless, mundane details, or throw in external events, simply to fill pages before writing the finale. The characters ought to be interesting enough to drive a story without resorting to filler, --trips to the library, the laundromat etc. etc.

And, I'm talking about the last 25 pages of this mundane filler, when your last chapters ought to have tons of build-up and momentum, not drudgery and mundane details.

Furthermore, thowing in assorted storms, landslides, etc.. also seems like desperate attempts to fill pages. Although the illustration of a gray and dark North Carolina Coast pictured on the fantastic cover is wonderful.

WHO SHOULD READ "NIGHTS IN RODANTHE": A total romance junkie will devour this and probably not notice the short-comings. Anyone who is committed to Nicholas Sparks and reads anything and everything by him, also would not want to leave this off their reading list. If you are looking for novels that feature middle aged to 60-year-old characters, you will like "Nights" also.

WHO SHOULD NOT READ "NIGHTS IN RODANTHE": If you adored Nicholas Sparks's "A Bend in the Road"---I have news for you. "Nights" is completely different. "Bend" was a thriller, sort of, murder mystery, where every aspect and all of the character's emotions and back-story were explored and played-out completely. Not so, here in "Nights".

New readers to Nicholas Sparks should start with "Bend in the Road" or even "A Walk To Remember" which were better novels than Nicholas Sparks's "Nights in Rodanthe." And, unlike "Nights", Nicholas Sparks's "A Walk To Remember" is the perfect story to read around the holidays since "Walk To Remember" takes place, and deals with Christmas issues.

CONCLUSION: One star off for the lack of depth in terms of the undeveloped threads. One star off for the lack of suspense, and without eccentric, flamboyant characters to make up for it.

I'm torn about whether to recommend this or not. I can certainly recommend the sleek front dustcover!!!