The Notebook

Its place in The Notebook

The Notebook is book 1 in the The Notebook series. It is followed by The Wedding. See the full The Notebook reading order.

Nicholas Sparks's breakout novel The Notebook (1996) tells the story of Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson, two teenagers from opposite sides of the social divide in 1940s small-town North Carolina, whose summer romance is interrupted by Allie's disapproving parents and the outbreak of the Second World War. Years later, engaged to someone else, Allie sees Noah's name in the newspaper and is forced to choose between the safe life she has built and the love she never stopped feeling -- a choice framed, in the novel's…