Dear John | 
 enlarge | Author: Nicholas Sparks
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.89
You Save: $7.10 (89%)
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Rating:  510 reviews
Sales Rank: 1501
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: Mti
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0446567337
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780446567336
ASIN: 0446567337
Publication Date: December 1, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780446567336 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Amazon.com Review
An angry rebel, John dropped out of school and enlisted in the Army, not knowing what else to do with his life--until he meets the girl of his dreams, Savannah. Their mutual attraction quickly grows into the kind of love that leaves Savannah waiting for John to finish his tour of duty, and John wanting to settle down with the woman who captured his heart. But 9/11 changes everything. John feels it is his duty to re-enlist. And sadly, the long separation finds Savannah falling in love with someone else. "Dear John," the letter read...and with those two words, a heart was broken and two lives were changed forever. Returning home, John must come to grips with the fact that Savannah, now married, is still his true love--and face the hardest decision of his life. Go Behind the Scenes of the Motion Picture Dear John (Sony Pictures, 2010)
Starring Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum
(Click on each image below to see a larger view)
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Product Description
An angry rebel, John dropped out of school and enlisted in the Army, not knowing what else to do with his life--until he meets the girl of his dreams, Savannah. Their mutual attraction quickly grows into the kind of love that leaves Savannah waiting for John to finish his tour of duty, and John wanting to settle down with the woman who captured his heart. But 9/11 changes everything. John feels it is his duty to re-enlist. And sadly, the long separation finds Savannah falling in love with someone else. "Dear John," the letter read...and with those two words, a heart was broken and two lives were changed forever. Returning home, John must come to grips with the fact that Savannah, now married, is still his true love--and face the hardest decision of his life.
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 510
 It was confusing and boring July 26, 2010
Ali Tuttobene
I managed to watch the entire movie and it started out really strong. It was a joy to watch and then it just got bad. The plot went from topic to topic I had no idea what was going on or what the underlying message was supposed to be. For me, this is the worst movie of the year.
 good book July 19, 2010
Sweety2100
It was a great summer read. Much much much better than the movie! The characters were real, the love that they felt for one another was real, and in the end the ending was super realistic. He chose to enlist a second time, and the women felt like he chose the Army over their future. She couldn't wait around for forever, and she had someone in her life that needed her more than John did.
Dear Nicholas Sparks: Please write more like this... July 16, 2010
monique ritter (New York)
Dear John is a fantastic novel - ranking up there with The Notebook and A Walk to Remember, two of my other favorites by Nicholas Sparks. It had all of the elements that Sparks is known for in his novels - love, heartache, sacrifice. Dear John follows the story of a young boy in the army who falls in love with a very beautiful "sheltered" girl right before leaving to war around the time of 9/11. Their love, though only founded within a three week time period, was strong enough to last while they were apart - or at least that is what they originally hoped for. However, time and war have a way of changing people and their desires. Dear John takes a look at young love, family, and relationships and the way they seemingly impact the lives of all involved.
This is certainly a quick and easy read - a great beach book for sure. Though it involves a young man in the army and the Gulf war, the emphasis of the novel is not on that but instead on the relationship that exists while they are apart. Another successful love story from Nicholas Sparks!
- Monique Ritter, Author of The Song Unsung
I loved this story July 12, 2010
M. Mulvey (Warwick, RI)
This was a wonderful story about love, honor and integrety. I highly recommend this book.
 What it isn't, what it is. July 11, 2010
Schmadrian
First off, I need to make some declarations before I get into the meat of my 'review'.
1) I don't write these reviews for Amazon, or its readers. I write them for *me*. I write them to better understand the novel I've just read, to better understand what the author accomplished (while guessing at what their intent had been...sometimes not the same thing at all), to better understand what works and what doesn't, towards the eventual goal of gaining a better grasp on what great writing is, what great storytelling is, what great entertainment novels featuring these elements can be. It is a self-serving process that I offer up for other Amazon readers to take as they will.
2) I envy and admire Mr. Sparks. He's managed to carve out a niche in the marketplace, writing (presumably) what he wants to write, and has a solid fan-base encouraging him to continue doing so. What more could a modern author hope for in this day and age? (Never mind that he's had the added compliment of having several of his novels adapted for the screen.)
3) I bawled through all the 'romance' portions of this novel. It is, at the very heart of it, a testimony to not getting what you crave, when your entire being (to the extent that you're capable at the time of giving your 'entire' anything) is lost in loving someone...or at the very least, desiring them. I know of what the lead character John speaks; I've carried the burden of a 'lost love' for more than seven years now. (Even though mine was a world-class case of unrequited love.) Leading me to Point #4...
4) I'm happy for the readers for whom this book resonated. Resonance is a personal thing. And perhaps the most contentious thing I can say is that resonance does not automatically infer -or confer- quality of writing. It only means that it resonated for you...and for other people who share this experience...and that the novel provided an especially positive experience for you. It doesn't mean it's a 'great novel', no matter how many copies it sells.
What It Isn't:
-It's not great writing.
-It's not great storytelling.
-It's not a great reading experience. (Unless you are a lover of this genre.)
What It Is:
-'Dear John' is 'genre-porn'. Pornography is generally acknowledged as material with no other inherent value -or purpose- than to stimulate a prurient reaction. 'Dear John' is a romance, further a heartbreaking romance, and so its purpose is to elicit the reactions that someone reading this genre wants to experience. That's all. It doesn't aim to elevate the reader's consciousness, it doesn't aim to illuminate Life (although there are a few nice examples in 'Dear John' when it does: adult Asberger's, the realities of armed forces personnel in Iraq not having been trained to be judge or police officers and the concomitant stress involved at still attempting to execute these duties, a general view of coin collecting), and it's not aiming to be 'great literature'. It unabashadly takes a certain tack...and Mr. Sparks does what he can to maintain it.
-It is facile but well-intentioned. On occasion it's ham-fisted...but nevertheless with an undeniable amount of acumen and ability, thanks to the author's experience and resultant skill. Unfortunately, in more than a handful of instances, it gets so mired in...well, in what can only be referred to as 'cringe-inducing' dialogue...that it threatens true mediocrity.
-It is a novel that at times has an inconsistent narrator's voice. 'Plaintive', for example, isn't a word that John -as he's revealed to us- would have used. If it had been, the entire tenor of the novel would have been shifted about seven degrees to the north/northeast. The same goes for the use of 'portending'. Ugh.
-On that note, when you have an emotionally-unevolved character acting as the narrator- Well, is that really what you want to have, given the limitations...unless you're intending on this narrator's limitations to become a huge part of the story? Because in 'Dear John', they're not. They inform the story, they affect the story, but they do not so much as to warrant taking this approach.
-It is a pleasing serving of what this genre aims to feed its patrons with, the sort of stuff that for those readers who want this kind of confection, hits the spot.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 510
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