Message in a Bottle by Nicholas Sparks

I can only imagine how many middle aged women went out, wrote a message, put it in a bottle and then threw it into the ocean after reading this.  Or spent all their time at the beach trying to find a message all their own.  Sparks just seems to have that kind of power.

Theresa is on vacation when she finds a bottle that contains a letter to a lost love inside, on the beach.  Urged by her editor, she publishes it in her weekly column and through readers, discovers two more letters from the same man.  They touch her, and she wants to know more about him, so she sleuths her way to finding him and develops a connection she didn't think possible.

Theresa is kind of a stalker.  I realize it's hidden under the guise of doing a reporting job, but we all know she went for herself, not the column.  And despite having no harmful intentions, that's still kind of creepy.  And Garrett, I honestly didn't see the appeal.  He's stuck on his dead wife and devoted in that aspect, but on his own he seems kind of moody and unforgiving.  Sure, he grows in the novel, but the time Theresa is near him he really doesn't seem that happy with her and I just can't figure out the attraction unless she's pining for the love she felt in his letters to his dead wife.  And although there is supposed to be a connection between them, I never really felt it in this book.

I did like the idea of the plot.  There is something romantic about finding love through a bottle tossed into the sea.  And the sea itself is always the subject of a lot of romances.  There's a little bit of sex scenes thrown into this book but nothing overly descriptive and I'd call it a tame romance.  The only part of the writing I wasn't that fond of were Garrett's letters themselves.  They were too cheesy for my taste and again, I didn't see the attraction there.  But then again I'm not a girl that really appreciates poetry either, so maybe it's just lost on me.

It's an ok quick romance and while the story is original, I just didn't care for the characters.  Luckily Sparks has plenty of other good books out there to try though.

Message In a Bottle
Copyright 1998
322 pages