Big city sceptic travels to a small town to investigate mysterious lights in the graveyard and falls in love with the local librarian.
This book was billed as part love story and part ghost story and that’s what I expected. But it would seem that my definition of ghost story and that of whoever wrote the blurb differs substantially. True Believer is a love story plain and simple, ghosts do not feature in the plot. It’s sad that the publishers didn’t feel that the romance alone would have been enough to sell this story, because as a romance it’s not too bad.
While the story has all the trademarks of a traditional category romance (an intense focus on the developing relationship of the main characters, a big misunderstanding and the obligatory black moment) it adds a few style elements that would have the category romance purists throwing up their hands in horror. For one the omniscient viewpoint is used, and while I don’t think it added much to the story it was refreshing to see it in a romance. For another there are a few scenes devoted to the secondary characters and plot where neither of the main characters feature, again the scenes didn’t really push things along much but it was nice to see how other characters were feeling about things.
The one thing that didn’t work for me was the amount of back-story exposition. Some of the back-story was necessary for a complete understanding of the current situation but it was presented in big fat info dumps. These slowed the pace and in places had me needing to stop and go back to find out what was happening before we danced off on a memory tangent. The same information could have been presented in a more interesting and engaging way. It was all tell and no show.
I found this to be an okay read but I’m not going out looking for Sparks’ other works. While far from the worst I’ve ever read both romance and ghost stories have been done better. If a trusted friend was to recommend another of his works I would probably read it but it wouldn’t be a priority.-Lynn
PS This is tagged as paranormal/supernatural and romance because that's how it's marketed, and not (as is evident from the review) because that's what we think! - Alex
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