Where's the Originality?

I love reading. If you know me, you know I love to read.  Some friends and I have a book blog where we review the books we read. It's great! On the vacation I recently took, and yes, I still have not posted about it yet - I brought a lot of books.  I didn't dislike a single one. It's kind of hard for me to dislike a book.  I talk a little bit about that in this post on the book blog. I can however dislike parts of a book.

Have you read any of the Nicholas Sparks' books?  You know what always happens? Someone dies. I can only think of one where the person doesn't end up dying, oh two because a dog dies in one. He's known for it, so I know I'm not ruining anything if you know anything about his books. 

It seems like so many times, a story is written and in order for the love story to be a true love story, someone has to die.  Why?  Seriously?  Let the main characters stay alive. You don't have to end with "they all lived happily ever after..." because who really does?  Dying is the easy way out almost, because couples struggle - which of course, hopefully, makes their love stronger and the relationship continue on and then more challenges continue to arise. So you can be a little more creative that having someone die to prove their love.  There are plenty of other sacrifices people can make for each other. Case in point: this book that I read.  I really enjoyed this book. (You can read the actual review for more on that.) But the ending was unnecessary. The characters made sacrifices all throughout the book.  Not all happiness is destined to be destroyed.  Being happy is not a bad thing.  There are so many other ways a story can end, other lessons to learn in love than learning to get over the death of a loved one.

I'm not an author. I never will be.  But should I take a stab at writing, I will not kill off any of my characters. I can promise you that. Oh, I also won't resolve everything in the story because as a reader, I think some situations should be left unresolved and up to the reader to decide. And no, it's not in order to leave open the possibility of a sequel, but because not everything always works out in the end. But yet, in a way, it does. That's the great thing about life.