The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

This summer, one of the books I read was The Last Song, by Nicholas Sparks. This is a realistic fiction novel about a teenage girl named Ronnie, and her little brother Jonah. Unexpectedly, she and her brother are sent to her father’s house in North Carolina, to spend the summer with him. There are many mixed emotions in her family about spending the summer away from her house in the city.
In the first week that Ronnie was there, everything was going wrong. She went to the board walk and discovered one of the volleyball games going on. In her dad’s town, boy’s volleyball was one of the highlights of the summer. Everyone came to the matches. While she was watching, something unpredicted happens that changes the rest of the summer. Will, the heartthrob of the town, was running to a loose ball and dove into Ronnie. From there on, her summer changed mostly for the better.
In New York, Ronnie was a troubled girl who never listened to her mother. When she arrived at her dad’s house, she put up a wall between her and her family. If they asked her a question they simply got a one word answer, if that. After she met Will, that wall became to come down and she enjoyed most of her summer. In the beginning of the summer, Ronnie met a girl named Blaze. She and her boyfriend were the misfits of the town. Ronnie figured that she would fit in perfectly with them, but in the end it was the complete opposite.
In this story, there are many literary devices used. Irony is used multiple times in the book. Blaze, Ronnie’s friend in the beginning, almost gets her sent to jail for something Ronnie had no part of. This adds tension to Ronnie, Will, and her dad’s relationship. Because Ronnie got into a fight with Blaze, she could be sent to jail yet another time, forcing her and Will to break apart. Even though there are many challenges throughout Ronnie’s summer, nothing can compare to what happens to her and her family in the end.
I enjoyed this book very much and would recommend it to anybody. Mostly I think this book was a “chick flick,” but I think that anybody could enjoy this wonderful novel.