Thalia @ Pictures in the Words

During my travels with Nicholas Sparks, I’ve noticed (with the sole exception of A Walk to Remember) that the more recent the book is, the more I’ll like it. However, I found this was most definitely not the case with The Last Song. This is definitely one of my least favorite Sparks novels ever, and a large part of that is owed to the insufferable character of Ronnie. I couldn’t stand her and aside from being a huge brat to basically everyone, she was a very cookie cutter and cliché character. She could very well make my list of top five most hated characters ever (if I had such a list). Fortunately, the book didn’t end up being a total waste, and while I’m not sure if the last hundred pages made the rest of the novel worth it, I did enjoy at least that much and didn’t end up totally hating the whole novel.

What I Liked:

• This story had actual rising action, and a climax, and a resolution! It was amazing! Most of Sparks’ books stuff everything into the last thirty pages after spending page after page on ridiculous details, but this time it was like he finally got it. That the climax and conclusion need to be as carefully exacted as the rest of the book–and it turned out wonderfully in the case of The Last Song. The plot with Ronnie’s father and his sickness was done very well, and it saved the whole book for me. I was so pleased to see how much time was spent developing the end of the novel, and it almost made me forget about how much I had disliked in the beginning.

What I Didn’t Like:

• When it comes down to it, there’s only one real reason I didn’t like this novel–bordered on hating it in the beginning, fact. And that’s this: Ronnie’s character is perhaps one of the brattiest and most insufferable characters I’ve ever encountered. Ronnie is your classic rebel girl–she fights with her mom and her brother; she ignores curfew and stays out late with her best friend, partying at all the finest clubs in New York; she wears black all the time and even has black nail polish and a purple streak in her hair (and she has “dark mascara”, whatever that means–maybe eyeliner is what Sparks was going for, since mascara doesn’t usually make a girl look like a rebel). She shoplifts to get a thrill. But she’s no ordinary party girl! She doesn’t drink, smoke, do drugs, or have sex–because those things are “stupid”. (I mean, okay, I’m pretty much the poster child for not doing those things, and even I had to roll my eyes–very few people are willing to go out to clubs in New York at midnight and don’t even take a drink every now and then.) She’s a vegetarian, and while she claims that she doesn’t care what other people eat, you can pretty much tell she’s a liar when she accuses Will of being a murderer when he mentions that he hunts. She loves animals and she loves children! She appreciates classic music and vinyl records! She’s reading Anna Karenina just for fun! (But only she’s allowed to do that–she refuses to believe that Will read the same book for his English class, because only she’s cool enough to read Anna Karenina.) She was man enough to stand up in court and admit that she’d done wrong by shoplifting (but only after she got caught)! She breaks up fights between strangers because a little kid almost got hurt (and then helped him find his mom)! She’s a saint, I tell you! A saint! … Can you sense my sarcasm yet? I don’t know how to further emphasize how ridiculously cliché Ronnie is. She’s all the “cool” of being a teenage rebel, but doesn’t actually have to deal with any of the flaws of those types of people (getting drunk, having sex with strangers, doing generally stupid things, being a jerk, etc)–instead, she’s presented as this rough-and-tough-but-also-very-gentle-and-sweet sort of person, when it’s…well, it’s a lie. Something you should know about me is that I have no tolerance for children who treat their parents poorly or say they hate their parents. No. Tolerance. For me, there are few situations (usually only abusive scenarios) where I think it’s actually okay to hate your parent or treat them poorly. That’s it. Ronnie’s parents are pretty much saints, considering what they have to deal with. Yes, they’re divorced, and maybe Ronnie blames her dad a bit for that, but she’s had a pretty cushy life. Therefore, nope, I don’t think Ronnie, in whatever teenage angst she’s experiencing, has any right to act the way she does through the course of the book. She refuses to talk to her mom (except to fight and whine) for an entire eight hour car ride, and then leaves without saying goodbye (even though she won’t see her for the whole summer). She runs away from her dad and doesn’t say a word to him all day, and a cop (who is a friend of her dad’s) finally has to bring her home. Where she then screams at her dad and leaves the next morning without another word. She says that she hates him (when all the man did was play the piano “too much” and that she never wants to even see his piano and steals her brother’s poptart. (What kind of soulless human being takes a ten-year-old’s poptart?!) Will, laughingly, comments in his narration that Ronnie isn’t the type to “put people in boxes”, when she’s already decided she hates him since he’s good at volleyball and a pretty blonde girl is looking at him. She lies about something so Will will do something for her, and then actually goes to his work to yell and scream about what an idiot he is (when she’s the one who lied in the first place). Shoot, I hate her, I really do. I don’t buy the “growth” she had over the summer, because she didn’t actually change at all. People changed to please her and somehow we’re supposed to believe she’s an angel because of it. Nope. I can’t stand books with a main character I hate, and Ronnie was so insufferable and idiotic and downright unbearable, that I wanted to throw this book against a wall or burn it or something.

Overall: Sometimes, a book has a few good points, but it’s all outweighed by something that just…grates against your nerves. For me, it’s Ronnie. I’m sorry, but a character who is that rude to her family and everyone she knows just…doesn’t deserve my respect. And if I can’t even respect the main character, why should I like the book anyway? I enjoyed Will’s point of view (though I will never understand why such a nice guy fell for a hideous person like Ronnie) and the climax/resolution of the book, but it wasn’t worth it to sit through three-quarters of it, hating life because I have to suffer through the point of view of an idiot. I’m honestly just glad this one is over with.

(http://thaliasbooks.tumblr.com/post/70162272521/the-last-song-review)