I almost put this book down after the Prologue. It was poorly written, overwrought at times, and it failed to evoke the emotions Spark was trying to evoke.When I got to the meat of the story, I was wondering who had written the Prologue. Spark has a warm, conversational tone in the book that draws the reader in. The story and the characters are interesting, and you grow to care about what happens.When he's not trying to evoke an emotion, Sparks is much more effective. When he's attempting to manipulate the readers' emotions, he fails. The ideas and images are trite and hackneyed. Sparks should let the emotion speak for itself.