THE LOST LOVE SONG Book Review

The Lost Love Song¹ by Minnie Darke, physical, 384 pages

*Synopsis from GoodReads: Concert pianist Diana is finally ready to marry her longtime fiance, Arie; she’s even composing a beautiful love song for him, and finishes it while on tour. Before she can play it for him, though, tragedy strikes—and Diana is lost to Arie forever. But her song might not be.

In Australia, the world has gone quiet for Arie and he lives his life accordingly, struggling to cope with his loss. In Scotland, a woman named Evie is taking stock of her life after the end of another lackluster almost-relationship. Years of wandering the globe and failing to publish her poetry have taken their toll, and she might finally be ready to find what her travels have never been able to give a real home. And through a quirk of fate or circumstance, Diana’s song is passed from musician to musician. By winding its way around the world, it just might bring these two lost souls together.

With heart-wrenching emotion, The Last Love Song explores what it means to be lost, what it means to be found, and the power of music to bring people together.

BOOK REVIEW: This book has a lot of story lines...like a lot! Yes the synopsis mentions Diana, Arie, and Evie but those are not the only people we meet throughout the journey of this love song. One of my friends in book club was being driven crazy with the amount of people that kept getting introduced. I have not read He's Just Not That Into You but I have seen the movie and that movie and one's like it (like Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve) are a bunch of story lines with a bunch of characters and their stories eventually end up coming together in the end. I can understand how reading this could drive someone crazy and I am usually one of those people. I've said it before in other reviews that there are times when there isn't a clear cut between one person/story to the next and it was hard to follow...but that was not the case here.

Each story had to be told to get to the end. Are there a few things that I wish had gone another way? Sure. Are there parts of the story that seem either irrelevant or could have been expanded if added somewhere else? Yeah. Is this a book that I'll read again? Yes. I typically don't underline anything in my books that I read outside of study guides or personal development books but this part is one that I want to remember!

"Music is the last thing we forget," Diana had later explained. "I read a book about it. Apparently, we have this special place in our brains for remembering music, and it's completely separate from the parts where we store every other thing. And when we hear music that we know, our brains light up in completely different ways than when we hear music we don't. We're wired up to feel something special when we hear music that reminds us of something." (pg 170 in my copy)

That explains why my frisson is generally geared towards music that I'm nostalgic about.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. If you've read or heard any of my reviews of books told from multiple perspectives then you know that it can drive me crazy. Books like Winter Garden are told from multiple perspectives and there wouldn't be a clear division of who was telling the story at what time. Oddly enough, this book is written in the same fashion but I think because early on it was giving He's Just Not That Into You vibes, I really enjoyed it.

5/5 Stars

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