Ugly Ursula

This was my first ever Nicolas Sparks book. It was a looong read for me. Maybe 10-13 hours (is this normal?). It was a long book coming in at close to 500 pages. However, i was very immersed in it and could not put it down. I will definitely read more of this author's novels. And I am glad to read that he has a ton of books already published and, according to many readers, this was not even one of his better books. That said, with only looking at the author's picture in the back of the book and noting he is a father of 5, I automatically suspected he is divorced, had cheated in the past, and works out a lot (by looking at his thick, muscular neck and noting that his character Ross runs more and more each morning!). I don't know if I'm right about him cheating but i was right about him being divorced and working out a lot. You cannot really write a book without putting some of yourself into it. So it was offputting a bit for me because cheating is offputting for me, especially in romance/reality genres. The main character Ross had ruined his initial marriage chances with his nice hot girlfriend by having a random one night stand and then telling her about it. It seems the book was advocating the whole time that cheating is not ok but a one night stand is fine so long as you don't tell your partner about it. I almost felt this was the message of the book. Seriously. Other than that, it was an interesting read for me about the real emotional toil on everyone of a divorce and the gratifications of raising a child. I truly believe only someone who's experienced real divorce could have written that way about it. Which, indeed, is what happened to our author.