The Last Song ~ Nicholas Sparks review

The Last Song
Grand Central Publishing
March 1, 2010 (movie tie-in cover)
480 pages
Amazon

The Last Song soon (very soon, as in this Wednesday) to be a movie starring Miley Cyrus, is a book by Nicholas Sparks. The Last Song's Ronnie (Veronica) is angry with both of her parents-but especially her father--after their divorce three years before the start of the book. Because of this Ronnie not only hates her parents, but has quit playing the piano (her father's a former concert pianist and used to teach at Juliard) and isn't taking his calls.

So, of course, it doesn't go over too well when Ronnie's mother decides to send Ronnie and her brother from their home in New York City to the North Carolina coast to spend the summer with their father. And that's where the story takes place.


I'm going to start off by saying that I didn't care for this book so, if you want to, you can stop reading now, if not: This book really, really didn't work for me.

I never cared one way or the other about really any of the characters. It wasn't that I especially dislked them, I just didn't like them either...I was incredibly neutral about all of them I think.

Then there was almost too much plot going on. It seemed like there was the 'Ronnie's rebellious,' 'the fire,' 'the stained glass,' 'Will's family', and about fifteen other things. I don't have a problem with multiple plots when they all work together but in this case it seemed like they were trying to work together for one cohesive story, but it never quite happened.

And let's not forget the turtles. While they were an interesting part of the story (and I've seen them on the beach going to lay eggs and it is amazing), it was one of too many parts to really be great.

On the subject of characters, Ronnie was supposed to be the angry, rebellious, I-have-purple-in-my-hair daughter but I think I had such a hard time really believing that, partially because of how things were written, but also because it was Miley Cyrus in my head (and she chose the name Ronnie and the screenplay came before the book so I can't say that's just the movie.

I am curious as to why this movie's coming out so soon after Dear John, though. The Last Song is set in the summer and would possibly be one of those good movies to see when you're at the beach and feel like seeing something really light. So, I would have thought they'd release it in the summer or at least close to the summer...


As you can tell, the book was not good for me, but it was apparently really good for a lot of people because it has an average 4 1/2 out of 5 rating at Amazon. See the movie, read the book, do neither, do both....Maybe it will work better for you. It did for Smitten With Books

3/10



(and I'm going to post reviews of books I don't like because when choosing what books to buy-or sometimes even library ones-I always check out reviews where the reader didn't like the book, too, to find out why. They're a decision making tool for me and they might be for someone else, also.)