Nights in Rodanthe

Title : Nights in Rodanthe

Writer : Nicolas Sparks

Year : 2002

Language : English (translated into Indonesian)

Even I neither watched Message in the Bottle nor read the novel, A Walk to Remember could easily draw my attention to Nicolas Sparks. He is indeed a modern romance author with his ideology of love implicitly written in his novels, which seem always become movies. A Walk to Remember, of which movies starred by Mandy Moore, is just a simple romantic love story for me, without any new ideas or innovation in plot. The only thing which drew me to the movie was just the sense of romance, which was strongly built in the movie itself. It was nothing novel or creative, in my point of view.

When I saw the trailer of the movie Nights in Rodanthe, and got a little preview of it, I could just get the idea of the movie like in a minute. I got the core of the story and not even interested in the novel. However, when my sister rent the novel and read it, I was a little bit interested to know how actually the story was built. Is it different from the other novels of Sparks? Or is it just the same easy-to-follow and flat-romantic as the others?? Well, backed by my little curiosity, I happened to read the novel. I enjoyed it, but still, I didn’t think that it is creative.

Adrienne is a widow, she has just divorced with her husband because her husband met-fall in love-and then married another woman. She is not sure that she can continue her life while she has to raise and rear her three teen children in a broken heart condition. She then goes to an inn in Rodanthe owned by her close friend to help her friend maintain it while her friend goes out of town to attend a wedding. There, Adrienne met Paul, another just-divorced-person who has to face his ex patient’s husband. Paul, a doctor, is divorced because he never thinks about his family, neither his wife nor his son. He only cares about his career, never stop to reach something by hard work. His wife got disappointed and his son is angry to him, beyond that…he is also considered responsible for the death of his patient, that’s why he comes to Rodanthe to meet his patient’s husband.

The story then becomes predictable, Paul and Adrienne fall in love to each other. At first, they are not sure about their feelings, considering their status, their failure in intimate relationships, their children, and their age. But that’s love in a simple romance, no matter the obstacles whatsoever, they surrender to themselves and fall into each other. Even though the end of the story is sad, but the way to that goal is just predictable either. There is nothing (for me) special in this story.

Then, Nights in Rodanthe is only a simple love story which everyone can make. The core and message of the story is also just common.

Rating: 2.5