The novel, set in 1958–1959 in Beaufort, North Carolina, is a story of two teenagers who fall in love with each other despite the disparity of their personalities.
[10] Best friend, Eric Hunter, who is the most popular boy in school, helps him and, to his surprise, Landon wins the election.
[11] As student body president Landon is required to attend the school dance with a date.
[21] Meanwhile, Landon continues to learn about all the people and organizations Jamie spends her time helping, including an orphanage.
Landon and Jamie visit the orphanage one day to discuss a possible showing of The Christmas Angel,[22] but their proposal is quickly rejected by Mr.
One day while they two are walking home, Landon abruptly yells at Jamie and he tells her that he is not friends with her.
Following thus, Jamie asks Landon if he would go around town and retrieve the jars containing money collected for the orphans' Christmas presents.
[33] Afterward, Landon asks Hegbert if they can go to the local restaurant, Flavin's, on New Year's Eve.
In turn, Landon's father helps to provide Jamie the best equipment and doctors so she can spend the rest of her life at home.
Although she is weak and in a wheelchair, she insists on walking down the aisle so that her father could give her away, which was always a part of her lifelong dream.
The Sunday New York Post holds that it "never fails to be interesting, touching, at times riveting ... a book you won't soon forget".
[65] African Sun Times echoes the former's comments, saying, "A remarkable love story that, like its predecessors, will touch the hearts of readers everywhere.
"[65] New York Daily News compliments Sparks, commenting that he "has written a sweet tale of young but everlasting love, and though he's told us to expect both joy and sadness, the tears will still come".
[65] Clarissa Cruz of Entertainment Weekly, however, panned the novel, saying, "With its cliché-riddled prose and plot twists that can be predicted after skimming the prologue, Nicholas Sparks' latest, A Walk to Remember, reads more like the script for a bad after-school special than anything approaching literature.
"[66] Although the novel is number 12 on their list of 1999 Bestsellers Fiction,[67] Publishers Weekly described it as "a forced coming of age story" and "the author's most simple, formulaic, and blatantly melodramatic package to date".
[68] Theresea Parks from Publishers Weekly goes on to say that many will be disappointed: "Readers may be frustrated with the invariable formula that Sparks seems to regurgitate with regularity".
[1] The movie was directed by Adam Shankman and produced by Denise DiNovi and Hunt Lowry for Warner Bros.; the film premiered on January 25, 2002.
[70] The film, starring singer and actress Mandy Moore (Jamie) and Shane West (Landon), is set in the late 1990s.
Sparks and the producer thought that because the film was suitable for teenagers "because of the message it provided," they had to make the adaptation more contemporary.