Typical teenagers have a point as they are growing up when they are trying to figure out who they truly are, when they become independent and when they become rebellious.

Ronnie, short for Veronica, is the prime example. Defiant and unwilling to listen to her mother’s nagging, she starts wearing dark clothing, puts a streak of purple in her hair and is never home before her curfew mostly because her father deserted her family. She is forced to visit her father in North Carolina the summer after she graduates from high school with her brother because she does not turn eighteen until August.

“The Last Song,” by Nicholas Sparks, is his longest book yet. Most people might not want to read the book when they find out that Sparks wrote the screenplay before he wrote the book and intended for the rebellious main character to be played by Miley Cyrus, but that does not mean that whoever reads the book has to ever see the movie.

Sparks has another success story with “The Last Song.” The reader will fall in love with the humorous side Ronnie’s brother adds to every situation; feel sorry for Blaze, the girl Ronnie meets at the fair; and hate Blaze’s boyfriend who thinks he is cool for being destructive. Despite the fact that Ronnie falls in love with the man she never would have dreamed of falling for in the span of a summer, the reader will want the characters to be happy.

This will be a good read on a rainy day for anyone who enjoys Sparks’s stories.