The Last Song

Ronnie Miller is seventeen, furious about her parents' divorce, and has not spoken to her father for three years. This summer her mother packs her and her younger brother Jonah off to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, leaving New York behind. Ronnie arrives set on resenting every day of it.

Her father, Steve, is a former concert pianist who now teaches. He is quietly working on a project for the local church. Music gradually becomes the common ground where he and his daughter start to reach each other.

On the beach Ronnie meets Will Blakelee, a local volleyball player who volunteers at the aquarium. Their first love grows through the summer and puts pressure on how far she is willing to trust someone.

Written alongside the 2010 film starring Miley Cyrus, the novel is a contemporary romance and family drama. Reading it means a slow thaw between father and daughter, a young love set against a coastal summer, and a story that leans toward loss and is likely to bring tears.