Nicolas

This post contains spoilers for the The Last Song by Nicolas Sparks

I think I finally understand my relationship with Nicolas.

For the longest time, I have wondered why I struggle to finish his books. This isn’t the first time I’ve started a Nicholas Sparks book and dragged my feet through it. I remember doing the same thing with his book titled See Me.

I have been on The Last Song for some months now. I keep reading it slowly and slowly. I’m at Chapter 31, and I can’t stop crying.

And I think I’ve finally answered my own question about Nicholas Sparks.

He makes you read and read and read.

And while you’re reading, you’re wondering why you’re taking so long. You’re wondering why you aren’t flying through the book. Sometimes you even think, “What’s taking me so long to finish this?”

But I understand now.

He’s building something.

He’s building you emotionally.

He lets you live with these people, he makes you know them and then he lets you see their relationships, their mistakes, their ordinary moments. You don’t even realize how attached you’ve become.

Then, at some point in all that, he just breaks you… Then, suddenly, you feel everything.

Everything.

You feel for everyone.

That’s what is happening to me now with Ronnie.

I’m at Chapter 31 and I’m crying because Ronnie is thinking about how she could have done things differently at the beginning of the summer if she had known her dad was sick.

…oh my God. That thought…

“If I had known…”

If she had known, would she have been kinder? Would she have spent more time with him? Would she have looked at those ordinary moments differently? Would she have held onto them more tightly?

And that’s what is breaking me… Because the tragedy isn’t only that Steve is sick.

It’s the realization that Ronnie is looking back at moments she didn’t know were precious while she was living them.

Now she knows and she can’t go back.

I think that’s what Nicholas Sparks does to me. He doesn’t necessarily make me desperate to keep turning the pages. He makes me stay long enough to become emotionally invested without even realizing it.

I think that’s why I keep going back to Nicholas even when I know I sometimes struggle to finish his books. Because somewhere in all those slow pages, he is quietly preparing me to feel everything… And I love it when I feel. Deep.