Carol (Iowa)--The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd. What a sensual read! Want to take a trip to the deep South into the eerie swamps? This has a feel of voodoo! The ending is perfect. If you liked The Secret Life of Bees by Kidd, you'll love this title.

Amy (Iowa)--Twilight, Stephenie Meyer. When 17-year-old girl leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human. This book is dangerously addicting and i had a hard time putting it down. Even when I did I was ready to pick it right back up again. I finished it quickly and I can't wait to read the sequal, New Moon.

Lena Giron

(Iowa)

Dear John

Dear John, written by Nicholas Sparks, will draw in all readers who love romance novels. It shares the connection between an army boy and a college girl in a summer that will never be forgotten. Something that the reader might get after reading this novel is sometimes people go away, but the love they have for them will always last.

            Dear John centers on an army man, the narrator, named John and the difficulties the army brings him. He spends a lot of his time getting stationed from place to place.

On his leave home he visits with the only man in his family, his dad, but soon it becomes quiet and he starts spending time at the beach surfing. While at the beach John falls in love with Savannah, a college girl who’s got her life planned out for her. They begin to fall in love but they then have to depart and go back to their normal lives. They try to make their relationship work throughout the rest of the novel and begin to realize it’s harder than it seems.

            My purpose for reading this book was for a popular fiction class and I wanted to see how the author wrote. My overall feeling about the book was that it was amazing. It brings the reader into John’s feelings about the war, his dad, and the women he loves. After reading this novel it makes me want to find more of the author’s books because they’re so catchy.

            When reading Dear John the reading will fall into the lives of the characters and won’t be able to put the book down. The characters are realistic and the situations occur like they could happen in real life. Once the book is started its fast paced and very east to get finished. The word choice and overall writing style was effective and powerful.

            During the novel John and Savannah struggle to keep their relationship strong and one might ask can love between two people be strong enough to keep them together even though they’re so far apart? The reader realizes that answer after reading the novel.

            I think Dear John is a novel that should be read by people who enjoy reading about romance between two people and who have hope for everyone to be happy. I would give this novel a five star rating because it was so unpredictable but at the same time everyone knew what was going to happen.