by Mandy Wilks

Created on: September 05, 2010   Last Updated: September 06, 2010

After reading ‘The Last Song’ by Nicholas Sparks I swore that I wouldn’t read another of his books as I found it very contrived and not terribly well written; however I had enjoyed his earlier novel, ‘The Notebook’, so when I found that ‘The Wedding’ was the sequel to that book I decided to give it a try.

‘The Wedding is all about the son-in-law of The Notebook’s Allie and Noah Calhoun's, middle aged, hard working lawyer Wilson Lewis and how he attempts to rebuild his failing marriage to Jane.

Over the last 29 years, Wilson has spent too much time at work to the detriment of his marriage and family, his wife has been much neglected and he has missed most his three children growing up. The final straw for his long suffering wife was when Wilson forgot their 29th wedding anniversary; Jane seems prepared to leave him for good.

Wilson suddenly realizes that he has one year to win back his wife’s love and rebuild his marriage if he is to do it by his 30th anniversary which it later turns out is to coincide with their daughter Anna’s wedding day.

So using Allie and Noah's love filled fifty-year affair and marriage as a guide and with the advice and encouragement of his father in law, Noah, Wilson spends the next year preparing for the coming celebrations; he learns to cook and to listens to all his wife has to say, he goes on a diet and becomes a much changed man.

But has Wilson left it too long to rekindle the love between himself and Jane, even with the help and guidance of 90 year old Noah?

As with ‘The Notebook’, this story is told in a series of flashbacks – but in this case it is Wilson and not Noah who is remembering what had brought him and Jane together 30 years ago. I’m afraid that I wasn’t that mad on this book, I thought that it started very slowly, and it took a while for me to really get into it.

However I thought that Sparks did do a good job with his characterizations; I did like the characters of Wilson and Jane, but I did think that the ‘surprise’, although lovely, wasn’t really that much of a surprise to me, it was really a little predictable and a little too sentimental for my liking. I liked Jane and sympathized with her character and I thought that the character of Noah was even stronger in this book than it was in ‘The Notebook’, my only problem with Noah was that at the end of ‘The Notebook’ Sparks clearly indicates that he died and yet here he is, still alive and talking to swans!

I have to say that generally I found ‘The Wedding’ disappointing and certainly not up to the standard of ‘The Notebook’.

It’s not a BAD book, but it’s certainly not a good one; however Sparks’s fans will probably love it; if you like sappy, clichéd stories add ‘The Notebook’ to your Mills and Boons collection.

Learn more about this author, Mandy Wilks.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.