The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

My eyes welled up, tears rolled down the cheeks, I was lying on bed flipping through the last few pages of the novel when the story is at its climax. My eyes couldn’t hold tears. I let it flow. Until this, I haven’t realized how emotional I am. How easily I could break down. As Nicholas Sparks took me through the height of his novel, each line is a droplet in the ocean of my tear-filled eyes.

The novel is intricately woven with threads of love, family and friends. Of course the waves and tides along the ocean ride of life.

The main characters include Kim, Steve, Ronnie, Jonah, Will, Blaze and Marcus. Kim is a single mother finding her way for her second love with Brian. She has a daughter and a son; Ronnie and Jonah. Their father Steve is away from New York, living a solitary new life in Wilmington, North Carolina. The story in between, connects the characters: Will,  Tom, Susan, Megan, Blaze, Marcus, Lance, Teddy, Scott, Pastor Harris, and others as Ronnie and Jonah sets for summer vacation with their father in Wilmington. The story gains momentum here.

The story turns wavy: low to high, high to low, sad to happy, happy to sad in Wilmington on vacationing their summer with  father whom they haven’t met for last three years, since he had moved from New York. Ronnie had never talked and responded to letters and calls her father made. She hadn’t been in good terms with her mother at home. Visiting her father isn’t her best time to see off summer. However, under duress, she consents to her mother to spend summer with her father who had been desperately starving to see his daughter growing to become a woman in a year and his growing son who is ten. He wants to make sure that his children understand why he’d moved away from them though that wasn’t his option. 

Ronnie falls in love with Will. Both of them love each other despite knowing the fact that the summer vacation shall set them apart. However, they remain adamant on their love. They’ve found common ground of love that synced. The summer seems flying as she spends time with Will.

With time she also starts loving her father whom she hated seeing. In a speck of few weeks of summer, she has changed a lot. She has undergone hell and heaven modification in her behavior, her attitude in a whole. The love around beautiful summer at Wilmington has done a lot to her as much as happiness between father and a daughter. She has seen different person in his father whom she thought otherwise. She thinks he is the best father she could have, a father who sees lot in his children. The summer goes beautifully with ambient love in family and Ronnie’s love with Will.

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Their happiness is found short lived when Steve, the father feels ill of cancer which was known to himself, Kim and Pastor Harris. That was the same reason why he’d insisted Kim to send them with him for summer vacation and she has accepted his request. He wanted to spend his remaining days with his children whom he missed those three years since he moved away from New York.

Finally he succumbs to this terminal illness leaving his daughter and a son. But he has taught them a lot in a short summer they spent together. As a father, he did his duty to instill life lessons. Those were miracles.

The story ends on happy note: Will comes to New York for his studies and meets his charming Princess Ronnie.

The story is wrapped with lessons. I have enjoyed going through. My eyes were literally glued to the pages of the novel until the last page. The novel has lot to say of love, family and friends. Hate can turn into love and vice-versa. It largely delves into how relationships can turn sour and revert to its normalcy of sweetness. How relations once hurt and wounded can heal again. It also lessons how vital is the time of parents to their children to read correctly of each other.

I can bet many would break into tears if you read this novel, Nicholas Sparks is capable of it. Message in a Bottle is no less than this. Next in my to-read-list is The Note Book which is unfortunately out of stock in many stores last time I visited. That is really popular selling Novel and I should find it sooner. I can’t wait to read it soon but I have some preparation to do in between. I will read it one day sooner.