Customer Reviews

The Lucky One (Charnwood)

5 star:		(161)
4 star:		(61)
3 star:		(39)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

THE LUCKY ONE

Nicholas Sparks

Grand Central Publishing

Hachette Book Group

ISBN: 0-446-57993-9

$24.99

326 pages

Reviewer: Annie Slessman

You can bet if Nicholas Sparks puts a book out there, it is going to sell. This scenario is due to his expertise as a storyteller extraordinaire. His latest work, The Lucky One will be touted by readers as one of his best works. Having written books like Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, readers know what they can expect when they buy a Nicholas Sparks book...great characters, great storyline and an electricity that stays with you long after you have finished reading the story.

Sparks main character in The Lucky One is ex-marine, Logan Thibault. Logan has served three tours of duty in Iraq and believes his survival is due to a lucky picture he found of an unknown woman. Once he completes his tour of duty, he walks from Colorado to Hampton, North Carolina in search of the woman in the picture.

Once he arrives in North Carolina, he takes a job at a dog training facility where he meets Nana, the elderly owner of the facility, Elizabeth, her granddaughter and her young son, Ben. Elizabeth, he discovers is the woman in his lucky picture.

The storyline stays true and builds to an exciting climax. There are stories within this story that adds story interest. Sparks knows how to build a story and keep a reader anxiously turning pages.

If you are a Nicholas Sparks fan, you won't be disappointed with this work. If you have never read Nicholas Sparks, this work is a great starting point.

Nicholas Sparks is the author of fourteen best selling works of fiction. Several if his works have been adapted to movies. Sparks and his family lie in the Carolinas.

This is a wonderful novel, told in a way that is fascinating and enjoyable. Nicolas Sparks knows how to tell a story. The characters are real and believable. I found myself caring about them early in the book. The author has the ability to make people come alive in just a few pages. Once I began to care about them, I was hooked. I couldn't put the book down until I was done. The Lucky One made for a few very enjoyable hours. That is what I want in a book: discovering people that I care about, and a good story to follow them through. It may not be great literature for the ages, but it suits me.

I don't usually read love stories, but I am glad that I found this one. After finishing this novel, I decided to look up the author's other books. I believe that he has written some other good stories that I will enjoy. I believe that you will too.

After seeing this book was #2 on the NYT bestseller's list, I read the jacket and dove in. The book starts extremely well with a modern and interesting narrative. The flashback scenes are well done and at no time lose the reader.

About 2/3's of the way into the book, the characters become well defined and start to gain a mild complexity. Unfortunately that is where the development stops. In an attempt to create a dramatic ending the book takes on a sit com like aspect. The characters become one dimensional, the story line predictable and you feel the author racing to create a tidy ending.

If the author had further developed the auxiliary characters and ending, it could of been on par with similar books in this genre like "The Bridges of Madison County".

Here in New Zealand we were lucky to have this book released on th 26th of Septemeber before the States release date. Another perfect book from Nicholas Sparks and is exactly what you come to expect from him. It truly is amazing how he is able to in each of his books capture the audience the way he does and this book is definatley no exception. You are drawn in with this story and makes you really think if there is such a thing as fate, luck, destiny and true love. I highly recommend this to any fan of Sparks and to anyone who wishes to become a fan. You will not be disapointed.

Don't know why, but every once in a while I get tempted to give this author yet another chance to finally come up with a book that I like. They often seem promising, yet his writing never changes. It is trite and repetitious, he overuses odd phrases, (for example, "'I'm sorry,' he said, meaning it"--page 150... Then on page 153,"'I'm sorry,' he said, meaning it". Oh, so you're trying to say that he is so very sensitive that when he says he's sorry, he means it?) Later, when Logan and Elizabeth are on their first date at that ridiculous restaurant where wait staff and patrons must recite scripted phrases in order to serve or be served, and the college students there jokingly state "We have crabs!", the author actually explains the play on words to the reader. Really? He didn't think we'd get it?

The characters are one dimensional and not believeable or especially likeable. Even the characters you are supposed to dislike are so stereotypical that you don't even care enough to dislike them. It's a shame, because judging by his picture, Nicholas Sparks looks like a very nice guy, and I want to like his books. But they are so predictable, so full of cliches, and so lacking in originality that I really must remind myself the next time I am tempted to read one that, if you've read one, you've read them all.

I am not one of those raving Nicholas Sparks fans that talk about how his books are the end all and be all of the modern romantic tale. At times, I find his books to be a bit corny and hokey and this one was really no exception. Unlike his earlier novels (The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe, A Walk to Remember), this book just does not seem to have the same zing. In fact, it's almost more of a zud...lol.

The story itself is told through the eyes of three main characters: Elizabeth, Thibault, and Clayton. All the characters are connected in different ways, and their actions with eachother are the true center of the story. At the beginning of the novel, we learn that Thibault is an Iraqi War Veteran, who has walked across the country looking for a woman he has never met. The woman is from a picture that he found half buried in the sand in Kuwait. Thibault views the picture as his "lucky charm," saving him from death many times throughout the war.

Thibault's first meeting with anyone his new town is with Clayton, a self centered, immature, ANNOYING cop from a famously rich family. It is easy to say that this character continually grated on my nerves. Every chapter that was from his point of view made me a bit queasy and I couldn't wait to finish them. Plus, he treats women as nothing more than sexual objects and that totally turned me off from his character.

I don't want to give anymore of the plot away because it will ruin the story for those who want to read it. I'm not saying it was a bad story, it just wasn't Sparks' best and I found it to be a bit far fetched. Who honestly walks from Colorado to the Carolinas with a back pack and a dog? If I were to do it all over again, I would have waited for the MMPB to come out and saved myself some money.

I have read all of Nicholas Sparks' novels (except The Rescue and Three Days...), and his latest, The Lucky One, fails to stand out as being one of his better works. The story started off slow, and ended in a hurry. Sparks did succeed in writing a good background story, and the characters in this book were well portrayed. As I read this book, I realized that the characters and plots were very similar to Sparks' earlier novels (such as the dog-human relationship and the love obsession of The Guardian, the war background of Dear John, the storm sequence of Message in a Bottle / Notebook), therefore ruining the originality aspect of the novel. Also, as I was reading the last 20 pages, I felt the story was a bit rush and it gave me the perception that the story ended right after Sparks got the story rolling. I also felt that the epilogue was a little bit forced and it was only there to make a final unnecessary twist to the story. Overall, The Lucky One is not a poorly written novel, but I expected a lot more from Nicholas Sparks than this since he is a veteran romantic genre author. I will still look forward to his next novel, and I hope that will turn out to be an epic love story.

Sparks delivers again with another great story with another set of great characters, who's stories all get intertwined and weaved together somehow yet again. I have to admit Sparks has a way of really getting you emotionally involved in his stories, and it's hard to put the book down until you've read cover to cover.

I don't wanna give anything away, but I have to say I was really impressed how Sparks developed and told his story this time making me care for the characters very early on, and I was actually almost shocked to see a "villain" this time around as well. I will admit a few characters and events seemed a little forced here and there, but I find that in a lot of his stories, so it just kinda goes with the territory. Regardless, I was sucked into the story and I enjoyed til the bitter end.

I do have to say this book really makes you think of things such as fate and destiny and whether or not they exist for people. I personally think they do and this story helps solidify that. I also have to say I actually expected a different ending than what we got...the ending I was expecting would of worked and satisfied me, but the one Sparks delivered gave me a little surprise and also satisfied. So it was a win-win.

A strong 4/5 for me.

While on tour in Iraq, U.S. Marine, Logan Thibault is jogging early one morning. He notices a photo partially sticking out of the sand. An attractive girl was posed in front of a sign titled, "Lucky Lady." There was an inscription, "Keep safe, E."

When Logan doesn't find the owner of the photo, before going into action, he places the photo in his pocket.

Could this be a potent of luck? Members of his Marine unit are injured or killed but Logan escapes injury and comes to believe that the girl is somehow protecting him.

After his military service ends, he decides to find the woman. Perhaps it is to thank her for her protection but he isn't exactly sure why. It's as if fate draws him to her, as if she was part of his destiny.

He sets about walking from his home in Colorado with his dog, Zeus. There was an indication that the photo was taken in the town of Hampton and after an anlysis, Logan decides that it is Hampton, North Carolina.

When he arrives in town, his first encounter is with Deputy Keith Clayton, a sneaky man and a bully who had been in the woods taking photos of unsuspecting coeds who were sunbathing. Catching Clayton in this act, embarasses Clayton and causes him to have an animosity toward Logan.

Later, Logan finds that the woman in the photo was Elizabeth, "Beth," and that she ran a kennel. There was a help wanted sign at the kennel and Logan accepts a job working for her. He doesn't mention the photo but becomes friendly and an indespensible part of her operation and a great friend to Beth's ten-year-old son, Ben and her grandmother.

The themes of the novel are fate and destiny. It could be said that the author, was, at least unknowingly influenced by Mark Twain and the naturalism movement in literature that was popular at the turn of the last century. The movement also dealt with middle class America where a person's fate was already ordained. The literature also placed more emphasis on character than action.

The pacing of the novel was precise with a gradual build-up to the momentus conclusion. The reader doesn't know if Clayton will have his revenge and disrupt the relationship with Logan and Beth, who was Clayton's former wife.

Logan and Beth's romance was tenderly done and some parallel could be made to the great romance of Romeo and Juliet. However, the reader will have to read the book to find if the ending of this well written story is also tragic.

I have read the reviews by others here, and I am most definitely in the minority. But then, everyone has their own opinion.

I found the book somewhat tedious. Initially, I liked the development of the main character Logan Thibault, as well as the antagonist, Keith Clayton. I thought the development of Beth, the love interest was quite a bit weaker. During some of the chapters developing her character, I found myself scanning and skipping along, rather than absorbing the detail.

The development of the characters of the antagonist and the love interest vacillated in the story telling. In the case of the antagonist (the love interest's possessive ex and father of her son) the author paints him first as a sleeze and then later gives him a decent side, and then back to sleeze again, etc. Very confusing. The love interst character repeatedly switches from being a solid, thinking, quality person to one who flips easily to an irrational/emotional side. Again, disconcerting. One of the late scenes describes her anger at being supposedly duped by Logan. Thereafter, with almost a one sentence reason, she almost instantly reverses herself and goes by to make up after just trashing Logan's life. Either a bad scenario or unrealistic writing.

Finally, the ending just leaps from the exciting danger scene to an epilogue type conclusion, in which the author jumps from the danger scene to several months later, leaving the reader in the dark as to what happened in the interim and how. In the final page (literally), we find that the antagonist died but has miraculously become a beloved father, and, at the same time the protagonist survived. No explanation of the fact that the last time we saw them they were both together, and in the same immediate danger, or how things proceeded from there.

I had not read any Nicholas Sparks books before; I tried this one to see how it would go. Based on the reviews I have read, I'll try one more but this time I think it will be one of his earlier efforts. I am wondering if reading Sparks is like reading Robert Ludlum's writing; which initially was good but ultimately became a caricaturization and lost its originality.