Background: The background to this book selection is simple: I love Nicholas Sparks. No shame.

Style: I love Nicholas Sparks’ stories, but I’m not always crazy about his style. He’s super descriptive, and sometimes it’s a little more than I can take. I always say that I don’t need to know what the characters ate for dinner because that’s what Nicholas Sparks does all the time. I can’t count how many times I’ve read the phrase, “on a bed of wild rice,” in his books. I don’t remember the description being too bad this time—there were probably only a few times he told me about his characters’ menu choices—and it’s obviously not terribly annoying, since I’ve read nearly every book he’s written.

Plot: Even though they’re all fluff reads, I love the plot in all of Sparks’ books. (Hey, we all gotta have our guilty pleasures.) His books are all love stories, but the outside events are enough so his stories aren’t repetitive. A Bend in the Road is a love story between Miles Ryan and Sarah Andrews, but the side story is about Ryan still hoping to find out who killed his wife in a hit-and-run accident two years earlier. It was mostly written in third person, but there were short chapters written in first person from the perspective of the person who hit his wife. I figured out who the narrator was about halfway through the book, but I liked waiting for the rest of the characters to figure everything out and watch everything unfold. In this case, knowing what was going to happen made the book more interesting instead of ruining it.

General thoughts: There are certain books by Nicholas Sparks that I like more than others, but I haven’t found one yet that I won’t recommend. If you’re a Nicholas Sparks fan and haven’t read A Bend in the Road, go pick up a copy.

My final verdict: