The Notebook
By Nicholas Sparks
Read by Barry Bostwick

     After moving away from home to start fresh and make something of himself, thirty-one-year-old Noah Calhoun comes back to the small coastal town in North Carolina where the house of his dreams sits desolate and untouched, with the means and motivation to transform it into something amazing. After a year, it’s almost done, but the ghost that drives him to work from the wee hours of the morning until late at night still will not let him rest. The ghost isn’t what one would say is the definition of a “real” ghost. The figure that haunts his every thought is the girl who stole his heart more than twelve years earlier.

       At twenty-nine, Allie Nelson is positioned on the pedestal that any society-loving southern belle would love to be on: she’s been raised in a high-society family and is now engaged to a successful young lawyer. Her future is as bright as any of the stars in the sky...to her parents, anyway. To her, there’s something missing – something left undone in her past. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t as happy as she should be...until she sees the picture of the boy she was once in love with on the front page of the newspaper...for restoring one of the oldest plantation houses in the area. Will going back to see him one last time allow her the chance to move on?

    This is a romantic tale of a summer fling that turns into a love that lasts a lifetime. Being both a Nicholas Sparks fan and a fan of the actors cast to play both the young and old Noah Calhoun in the movie adaptation of this book, this story wasn’t hard for me to get into. The flow of the writing is so natural it makes the listener think they’re actually listening to someone in the room tell the story. The entire way through the six CDs, I found myself picturing the characters, scenery, and storyline so well that it could’ve almost been a movie in my mind. That’s when I know I’ve found a good audio book. This is my second favorite now, next to Spark’s “The Guardian.”

      Barry Bostwick, best known by many as the strange, sometimes clueless mayor on “Spin City,” is the narrator for this audio. He does an excellent job of stretching his acting skills into the vocal roles of each of the characters. His mellow voice melds with the smooth words, making any listener (especially this listener) become immediately entranced and pulled into the story.

      It’s a heart-quaking, tear-flowing read that will make you laugh, cry, and scream all at once when you realize you just finished the last CD.