A Walk to Remember

So A Walk to Remember is my all time favorite movie, when i was at barnes and noble the other day looking at Nicholas Sparks books i found it and i got so excited! I didnt know this was a book and that, that was made into a movie. It is actually alot different the movie takes place in what im guessing was the 90's but the story was orignally written for the 50's, the book is being read by the main boy Landon who is now 57, but when he met Jamie they were seventeen and it was 1958. Jamie was the preachers daughter and Landon was a little mischievous teenager. In the movie the setting is something more familiar to us being that the movie was set in the 90's, but i like the book because you get to see how things may have been in high school back then is it always going to be the same no matter how old or is different with time? I havent gotten that far in it yet but i am already comparing the two.