He’s known as a king of romance and is an icon among fans of the genre. With 23 novels published, 11 of which have been adapted into feature films,Nicholas Sparksis renowned for his powerful love stories. The kind of tales that can make anyone swoon with depictions of relationships couples grow to idolize, his stories can be tragic, yet, are often more poignant because of this. His stories are sometimes criticized for being sappy or idealistic but are usually seen as examples of how powerful love can be when it’s with the right person.
Love them or hate them, the film adaptions have often been huge hits, underpinning just how popular Sparks and his epic stories are. The films have attracted some big names, featuring the likes of stars like Kevin Costner, Richard Gere, Rachel McAdams, Channing Tatum, and Zac Efron. If you’ve never seen one, it’s probably best to keep a box of tissues around when you do. With so many memorable couples and moments from the movie adaptions, here’s our take on how every couple in them ranks.
11Gabby and Travis - The Choice
While there arenew film adaptationsof Nicholas Sparks novels in the works, it’s now been seven years since the last one. That film wasThe Choicestarring Benjamin Walker and Theresa Palmer with a great supporting cast that included Alexandra Daddario and Tom Welling. The story’s main couple, Gabby Holland and Travis Shaw, seemed to lack a little of the passion and enamoring qualities that many of the past films had.
Related:Every Nicholas Sparks Movie Adaptation, Ranked by Box Office Gross
This one was also a little more cliché, since it told a girl-next-door story as Gabby initially wants nothing to do with Travis, but later falls hard for him. There are complications aplenty courtesy of the fact that she’s engaged. The story does flesh out nicely though as it switches between past and present to show the series of choices that leads Gabby to where she is.
10Theresa and Garret - Message in a Bottle
This one may have become something of a forgotten romance film over the years.Message in a Bottlewas released in 1999, starring Kevin Costner in its lead. What distinguished this couple’s story was that Garret never wanted Theresa, or at least he didn’t know he did initially. The couple finds their way together when he writes a love letter to another woman and throws it into the ocean.
As fate had it, Theresa finds the message and becomes consumed with trying to find the woman it was meant for and winds up meeting Garret. As a sweet twist, she instead falls for him. This was one of those Sparks stories that was gut-wrenching for how tragic it was. Ultimately, when he finds out how and why they met in the first place, it sends themdown a tragic path. Despite this, they made an adorable couple that reminds us that sometimes, we may not always end up with the one we’re supposed to.
9Ronnie and Will - The Last Song
This film saw once real-life spouses Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth cast in it. The pair actually met on the set of the film and went on a whirlwind romance that lasted ten years, and was filled with everything from break-ups, make-ups, a short-lived marriage, plenty of fodder for the tabloids, and a recent hit song that seems to have put a lot of it into perspective — at least from Miley’s POV.
The Last Songwas actually writtenwith Miley in mindfor the part. While she and Hemsworth were great in it, their on-screen couple, Ronnie Miller and Will Blakelee, were ultimately a sweet end to a rebellious teenager story. The couple’s highs and lows were slightly more juvenile than other films since they were a pair of teenage lovers. As sweet as their story was, reality tells us that couples their age rarely stay together forever.
8Adrienne and Paul - Nights in Rodanthe
If Ronnie and Will were a little young, Adrienne Willis and Dr. Paul Flanner’s only drawback was that they were older than the typical age of couples viewers were used to from a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. InNights in Rodanthe, the pair were both middle-aged, she was in the process of being divorced, while he was a surgeon haunted by losing a patient.
Thrown together at a romantic beach-side inn, the pair complement each other well and sparks eventually start to fly between them. While their story wasn’t as unforgettable as others, they made a sweet pair with some great moments between them. The fact that they were played by Richard Gere and Diane Lane also gave them fantastic chemistry since it was a reunion for the actors after previously working together onUnfaithful.
7Sophia and Luke - The Longest Ride
The Longest Ridebrought together Sophia and Luke, a couple who meet and start dating after he suffers a major injury as a professional bull rider. The sweetest part of the movie and the couple’s love story is how it’s informed by a series of love letters telling a parallel story of a World War II veteran and his wife in flashbacks. One of the most recent films, this one was a classic Sparks story with plenty of tear-jerking moments and a wonderful tale of love against the odds resonating throughout.
6Beth and Logan - The Lucky One
Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling made foran unlikely coupleas Beth Green and Logan Thibault inThe Lucky One.She was a single mom with a controlling and manipulative Sheriff’s Deputy as an ex-husband. He’s a marine struggling with PTSD after surviving some horrendous moments on his tour. Finding a photo of her when his squadron was attacked, Logan believes the woman to be his guardian angel and tracks her down.
The pair grow close with Logan’s secret of why he really came to town hanging over them while Beth’s ex adds an ever-present danger to their union. This couple may have been years and miles apart but still manage to find their way to each other with a touching backstory informing the journey.
5Amanda and Dawson - The Best of Me
InThe Best of Me,theirs is a tale that’s told in a sweeping manner, shifting between the past and present. When a twist of fate reunites Dawson with his high school sweetheart, Amanda. The pair once shared an intense love but were forcibly separated by circumstance since Dawson’s family is an endless source of pain and danger to him.
The problem in the present is that Amanda is now married and even has a child. Spending time with Dawson reignites her love for him, though, and she acts on the feelings. However, fate has different ideas and the resulting tragedies are outweighed only by the sweet and unbelievably poignant twist that ensues. Keep a lot of tissues handy for this one.
4Safe Haven
Widely regarded as one of the most intense of all the films based on Nicholas Sparks novels,Safe Havensaw Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough in the leads as Alex and Katie. She’s a woman who escapes her abusive husband and builds a new life for herself as a different person. In the small town where she settles down, she meets a neighbor, and later, Alex too. He’s a widower and single father of two kids.
They begin a relationship, and she grows closer to his kids. However, we soon learn that she’s fled her ex-husband, a cop and alcoholic who she may have killed in self-defense. A tumultuous story full of shocking twists, itculminates in an unbelievably poignant scenewhere we learn who Kate’s neighbor actually was all along. Katie and Alex’s tale was one that only enforces how good a couple they were since, unknown to either, a supernatural force actually brings them together.
3Savannah and John - Dear John
Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried made for one stunning but tragic couple whose story inDear Johnprovided intense moments of both love and sadness. When Savannah and John meet and fall in love, his military service separates them as they continue their relationship through a series of letters while he’s on deployment.
Fate extends his service far longer than either ever expected and months soon turn into years. Despite their best efforts, she eventually writes to tell him she’s fallen in love with someone else and plans to be married. When tragedy finally brings John back home, he learns Savannah’s husband is someone they both knew. As much as he still loves her, he chooses to respect her marriage. However, fate again intervenes through tragedy and proves thattheir love may not be overjust yet.
2Jamie and Landon - A Walk to Remember
Known as one of the best-loved Nicholas Sparks films by fans,A Walk to Remember,is a classic love storyof a good girl falling for the bad boy, but sways from the overdone conventional trope in true Sparks style. Rather than Jamie (Mandy Moore) just changing Landon Carter (Shane West), her love does do this, only for her to reveal she has leukemia.
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Nicholas Sparks' stories have become a beacon to many people who love them for their ability to help us escape the pressures of normal life and delve into a fantasy world where love finds a way, no matter the odds. This fact and their appeal was summed up perfectly by snippets of what Anne Helen Peterson ofBuzzFeedhad to say about them.
“…the Sparks love story is rooted in an almost pre-digital arcadian space, a stone’s throw from the ocean, filled with ancient trees bathed in golden light, and nary a computer or smartphone in sight. In the city, it’s all concrete and stoplights…The rom-com focuses on the contradictory and frustrating demands that structure the lives of twenty- and thirty-something women; the Sparks love story, however, offers a fantasy space in which money and race are invisible and the past…The rom-com has to be comedic in order to distract us from its implausibility, and the Sparks narrative is replete with tears in order to tether us to its emotional core and overarching message: Namely, that in the end, it’slove, not romance, that matters and endures.”
The tragic twist inA Walk to Rememberturns the story on its head as we see Landon become her comfort as her illness slowly withers her away. Despite the tragedy, the pair form a bond so strong it even manages to reunite Landon with his estranged father. Some unbelievably sweet moments and poignant facts about how she truly felt about him gave it one of the most bitter-sweet, but touching endings of all the films.
