The central question with regard to Nicholas Sparks’s The Notebook is whether it is a novel of love or romance. Novels of love and romances are not the same. In romance novels, the character description is not limited. They can be described as common people with ordinary jobs or they can be socialites with extravagant profession.But the characters in love stories must be as real as possible. They cannot be luxurious people with extravagant jobs. A novel cannot be considered as a romance if there is no happy ending. But there is no clear explanation to what kind of ending a love story has to have. According to Sparks’s views on characteristics of romance and love, he considers The Notebook as a novel of love. Even though, as readers, we respect the author’s interpretation, the characters of his novel have typical romance characteristics, and it is likely that it was marketed as a romance novel because of the second cover of the novel.
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