Dear John

”What does it mean to truly love one another?”

It stands to reason that a Nicholas Sparks novel will have this as its opening line. And at first glance you’d assume to apply this to the story of John and Savannah. The two who love quickly and deeply, yet circumstances keep them apart.

Yet having finished this book a few days ago, I now think it involves all kinds of relationships, not just romantic. As this book taps into all kinds of love. Unrequited love, the love of a sibling, love between best friends, familial love. And yes, romantic love. All equally important, and all equally capable of having you soaring the heights or leaving your heart shattered in a million pieces.

As kismet would have it, Cupid’s arrow struck gold the day that John Tyree and Savannah Lee Curtis’ paths crossed one late afternoon. He was on leave from his army base in Germany, she was on leave from college. The two opposites found their differences complemented each other. He being a bit of a bad boy who joined the army as he had nothing better do do, she being keen to earn her education degree to help children with learning difficulties. John was brought up in a single parent family. His father a painfully shy man who found it difficult to communicate with his son, the conversation often running out before it had even started. Savannah grew up in a warm family environment with parents who were still madly in love and happy as clams.

As fate must intervene in a story such as this, despite desperately wanting to be together, John continues to re-enlist for another term with the army. September 11 changed his perspective of the world, and felt it his obligation to do so. Savannah, as is understandable, finds it harder to wait for him, with no end date in sight.

There are beautiful passages of both looking up at the night sky when the Full Moon is shining. Each knowing that the other is also gazing at the same Moon.

”Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can’t believe that ours didn’t go on forever.”

Broken up into three parts, the story follows the first meeting of John and Savannah. Part One is the giddy feeling of falling in love. Where anything seems possible. We learn about army life from John’s perspective, his love of surfing when on leave, and his awkward relationship with his father. Savannah’s calm and optimistic (altruistic even) personality shines through, with her spending her summer break helping a charity build a home for those less well off.

Part Two has the relationship somehow surviving the distance, with endless letters going back and forth between John and Savannah. Until September 11. Until John re-enlists again. Until he receives the letter he never wanted to, starting with the words Dear John…

Part Three shows the reality of life. Both having to deal with heartache after the illness and loss of loved ones. The difficulty of trying to cope with such life altering situations. And where people’s true colours are shown. What would you do for a friend you loved, but could no longer be in love with?

The ending! The prologue and epilogue segue into one another, into such a beautifully poignant way. While I had a feeling it would be sad, I was surprised at how much it affected me. And got me to thinking about how many pieces of ourselves we leave with the people we love.

Is it formulaic? Quite possibly. But it didn’t bother me. It had been many many years since I last read a Nicholas Sparks novel, and I have to say that I enjoyed this very much. There’s a comfort level in knowing that you’ll be told a story in a straightforward manner with no bells and whistles, and that the characters are ordinary people with their own struggles. This was just the book I needed, and I’m now tempted to go and dig out my other Nicholas Sparks books and delve between their pages again.

3.5 stars ⭐

i wciąż ją kocham... to odnośnik do tej historii, bo po latach nadal ją doceniam

If Savannah can wait for 21 years to give her virginity to someone she loves...
Then why can't she wait a little bit longer for John to come back from the army???!!!
She's madly in love with him.
Is that what a nice and a sweet person supposed to do?!



I could handle the slowness and the too-much-narration of this book. but THAT THING, the one that I mentioned above... I couldn't take it. Really. She's just unbelievable. She doesn't even know what she really wants!

Okay, so, this is my second Nicholas Sparks's novel after  A Walk to Remember, which I really loved. It tells a story of John Tyree who takes two weeks off from the army. Then he met a sweet girl named Savannah, who by chance did a volunteering in John's neighborhood. As you might already guess, they fall in love for each other. Really deep. They're quite certain they're gonna get married to each other and live happily ever after. Until 9/11 tragedy ruins everything.

I started reading this book 2 months ago but it stopped after I read chapter one. I liked it when John talking about his awkward relationship with his calm/quiet father, but my enthusiasm faded when he talked much about Savannah. It kinda boring to me. Maybe I'm not really into romance. But I don't think it should be that flat, right? What happened to John is love at first sight with a sweet, nice and almost perfect girl with almost no real conflict between them. Even their fight over Savannah's diagnosis of John's father didn't really move me. Tedious as before.



And then that moment came. When John's father got sick. My God, it was so depressing. Really. Even the single explanation of his father's condition broke me into tears. I really wish Sparks would talk more about Asperger syndrome that John's father suffered from rather than his agitating relationship with Savannah. And I think this is the main reason why I gave this book a three stars instead of two. It was all for John and his father relationship. <333

Alright, it's not always agitating when John narrated his relationship with Savannah. It was good near the end, though. The conflict was real. Even though Savannah became more hateful than before (at least to my own opinion), it was nice to finally read something interesting between them. What happened to John and Savannah in the end wasn't something that everyone would call a happily ever after, but it's still acceptable to me. Since, you know, i don't really adore this couple. :p

So that's all my review for this book. I really need to watch the movie again and decide which one is much better. And for you, who decides to read this book, enjoy yourself while reading it and be patient if you hate a slow pace story.

True love means that you care for another's happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.

Sparks, I love this book, I love Savannah, John and Tim too.. I love you man..

Dear John is an amazing book, It took me to another place, made me feel such beautiful, strange feelings I can't even describe, each word touched me alot, Savannah's and John's love touched me way more.
I liked the way they were and the way the book was.

Despite that the whole novel was talking about true love, and that we have to care about the people we love more than ourselves, but the ending was awful, I hated it, according to me it was the worst part of the book, he disappointed me.

Anyway, it was really a beautiful book..

Just READ IT.

Qué llorera, por Dios! Debo confesar que al empezar la novela, no entendía las buenas críticas que había leído acerca del libro. Pero, después de llegar al ecuador de su lectura, ya tenía el corazón en un puño. Realmente es una historia maravillosa!!!

So I made my way (finally) through Nicholas Sparks’ Dear John. Had we not been hit with a Nor’Easter snow storm, and been snowed in on Saturday night, I probably wouldn’t have read it. There were a million things I could have been doing around my house that day, and there are a handful of books yet to be read on my shelves, but something compelled me instead to give Dear John another go. At a certain point I just wanted to know what the end was going to be, and if it was going to end as badly as I suspected. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people who can just flip to the back and read the last chapter, I just can’t do it. So instead, I tortured myself through another story with a shitty ending. There, I said it. The ending sucked. Almost as much as the ending of My Sister’s Keeper…I won’t even begin to describe the anger that book and it’s ending made me feel! The ending also sucked almost as much as the entire beginning and middle too.

This is now the second book by Nicholas Sparks that has left me deflated and disappointed. Of course someone dies, it wouldn’t be Sparks if someone didn’t die, but surprisingly this time around it wasn’t the hero or heroine (like in The Notebook, or A Walk to Remember, or Message in a Bottle, or Nights in Rodanthe - jeez the man likes to kill people!!).

He sets up all of his stories as these epic romances, and I don’t know about you, but when I read a romance novel, I want the couple to BE TOGETHER IN THE END! The Notebook is fine because she dies at an old age and they have a wonderful life together. Death can be okay as an end only if the author does the love story justice (example where this is not okay – Nights in Rodanthe). It is NOT okay in my opinion to write twenty some chapters about a couple who in the end you are going to pull apart and when you have your heroine “fall in love” and marry the wrong guy for all of the wrong reasons when the right guy is right there, still loving her with absolutely everything that he has and who will never stop loving her. The end of the book left me wanting to go out and find all of the John Tyree’s of the world and give them big hugs and tell them that I am sorry the women they fell in love with turned out to be bitches.

I often let Nicholas Spark’s slide because he is a man writing romance, and let’s face it…men really have no idea what women want or how we think. However, how many times will he write novels in a male point of view and use the same do-eyed good Christian girl as the female love interest? Aside from the plot being weak and often dragging, I still stick to what I said before – the writing was just lazy. He could have done so much more with John and Savannah’s interactions, he could have given us a little more love and a little more…soul. Yeah, that’s the word I am looking for.

I understand that in real life things don’t always have a happy ending, and sometimes we get our hearts broken, but this is fiction and when reading fiction I want to be entertained. I want to get lost in a story that makes me feel good inside, that leaves me with hope at the end that love to last a lifetime really does exists.

My disappointment with the story however will not necessarily stop me from seeing the movie adaptation. (And not just because Channing Tatum is playing John – although that helps!) I just watched the trailer for the movie again, and it looks like the screen writer has definitely done the words that Sparks wrote justice however just be warned that the trailer is deceiving.

I did enjoy this book. I was bummed when he renewed at the army. I’m a sucker for happy endings and it didn’t end the way I was hoping it to. I was a bit sad for John

OK, so...I finally finished. Like a lot of other people, I read this simply because I saw the preview for the movie and I HAVE to read a book before I see the film adaptation. In this case, I really wish I wasn't so anal retentive.

Anyhoo, the book. Typical Sparks fare - star-crossed lovers, torn apart by fate, life, what have you. I really enjoyed the interaction between John and his father a lot more than I did his relationship with Savannah, maybe because it seemed far more real. I never warmed up to Savannah, even though she was supposed to be the perfect, lovely Southern young lady. And, like SO many other reviews on here, I too thought the ending was horrid. As I was nearing the end of my audiobook, I knew exactly how it would end, but I still had another disc to go. It was seriously painful...I can get behind tragic/unrequited love stories, but this one just seemed so pointless. John literally gives up everything he has in his entire life for someone who treats him badly for 90% of their relationship. I always know what I'm getting myself into with a Sparks book, but in this case I left feeling totally dissatisfied; it's like when you go to a buffet, and you know what you're about to eat is terrible for you, but you binge anyways and have massive regrets immediately afterward. I'll still go see the movie, mostly because my sister-in-law is super excited to see it, but part of me hopes this is one of those instances where Hollywood romanticizes things and changes the ending. This book could really use it.