Book Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Miller’s life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alienated from her parents, especially her father . . . until her mother decides it would be in everyone’s best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie’s father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church.
The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story about love in its myriad forms – first love, the love between parents and children – that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that deeply felt relationships can break our hearts . . . and heal them.
Review
Can I just start off by saying I’ve never cried so much reading a book. Usually when a book makes me cry I tear up, gulp a few times and soldier on. But The Last Song made me hysterical.
See, I’d watched the film last year so I already knew what would happen when I read the book. The film made me bawl like a baby –yeah, I cry a lot at sad films: My Sister’s Keeper; I cried throughout the whole damn film – anyway. I knew what to expect. Or so I thought.
Ronnie is a seventeen year old girl with a lot of Daddy issues and is living the rebel phase of her teenage life. When he parents split up three years ago, her dad took off from New York and Ronnie hasn’t spoken to him since until this summer when her mother drops Ronnie and her little brother Jonah off to their dad Steve for the holiday. Ronnie doesn’t want to be with her dad and so spends a lot of her time away from the house getting soda spilled over her and meeting Will. Will is taken by Ronnie as soon as he spills her soda on her by hitting a volleyball at her accidentally. Ronnie is not so impressed.
The summer for Ronnie turns into a holiday of trouble, tests and realisations. The novel alternates between Ronnie, Steve and Will’s point of view. There are a lot of secrets in the story that break the reader’s heart. By the end of this novel you will have fallen in love, recognised the need for forgiving quickly and the rare beauty of second chances.
I can’t think of what I didn’t like about the novel… just maybe that it made me cry so much. At times I wanted to slap Ronnie for being such a bitch to her dad. But it was necessary for the plot.
A must-read for all Nicholas Sparks fans and anybody who wants to believe in/read about love, second chances and forgiveness again!