A Rant

You guys, I need to rant. So for my 23x23 one of my goals was to read 50 books in a year, in order to not get bored with picking the same kinds of books I've tried to be inspired from different places of my life and overall I have loved dipping my toes in different areas of reading that I hadn't been before.

But I am so mad after the last book I finished today, I just had to tell you about it. Being curious about what makes everybody love Nicholas Sparks, I decided I should read the newest in theater's "The Lucky One". I started it a couple of weeks ago but quickly lost interest and decided I would finish it during my beach vacation next week. Then all the sudden on Tuesday I couldn't stop thinking about it and had to plow through the last 200 pages in two days. When I finished yesterday, I was left feeling empty, angry and compelled to write a review. That was actually the tipping point, my boyfriend said, "You have to be mad if you want to write a review, that's the end all game".

Now I don't know if it's my English degree that makes me so mad when reading this but let me just include a few points:
1. The main character has a dog that is continually talked about in the book, while he plays an integral part towards the end of the story, overkill, we get it, the dog is important.
2. The ex husband is the bad guy, and he's kind of a douche, but at the core he is a jealous, spoiled, brat. Whatever, that's men sometimes. And they kill him off! It's so ridiculous to me that Sparks couldn't think of any other way to resolve the plot but to kill him.
3. The whole story is about a guy who walks across the United States to meet a girl he's idolized in a picture for five years. When she finds out, she thinks it's creepy, but he convinces her it's not. Just fyi, it's still creepy.
4. He convinces her, also, that he didn't track her down to fall in love with her. Could you be more transparent!?

All in all, I wished this book would've done more than it did, with the military plot line I was excited about some more internal struggling from the main character, but in the end the book was just for a lonely girl wanting to feel the power of love. Which made me mad, and never want to read another Nicholas Sparks book.

Have you read any of his novels? Am I just missing something?