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Behind every great love song is a great love story, from the author of Star-Crossed NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • “A tender tribute to the healing powers of love and music . . . Readers will be wowed.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) 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 her: 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.
Behind every great love song is a great love story, from the author of Star-Crossed NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • “A tender tribute to the healing powers of love and music . . . Readers will be wowed.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) 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 her: 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.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the bookAnniversary
Naturally, Arie and Diana bought a house with a bay window. It was a terrace house on a narrow street in the city’s historic quarter—a neighborhood of sandstone cottages, artfully painted weatherboards, beautifully curated vintage stores, tiny street-corner parks and perhaps the world’s highest per-capita concentration of rustic bakery-cafés.
It was Arie who found the house. After being outbid at two auctions, he went on the offensive, walking the streets on weekends and knocking on doors until at last, in Tavistock Row, he came upon a house with a bay window and an owner who didn’t laugh in his face when he asked if they were interested in selling.
The place retained every last bit of its shabby, unrenovated charm, and its location gave heft to the price, but Diana declared the bay window to be perfect. It was on the upper story, in a room with polished floorboards and double doors of frosted glass. Diana painted the walls herself, in a shade of beige that she chose almost entirely because it was called Grand Piano, and she angled the Steinway so that the bay window was at her back and the morning sun fell on the keys while she practiced.
In that house, on the seven-year anniversary of the day Arie and Diana had met, a packed suitcase stood ready at the base of the stairs. In the morning, Diana was going on tour. First stop Singapore, then onward to the places whose winters made her think of snow domes: Paris and Salzburg, Prague and St. Petersburg. She would be overseas for almost a month, so—as was customary on nights before she went away—Richard and Lenka came over for dinner.
Although Diana and Arie had a snug little dining room, meals with Richard and Lenka never made it out of the kitchen. As Arie loaded toppings onto his homemade pizzas and slid his creations in and out of the oven, Richard gave unsolicited advice from the other side of the counter. Diana, in bare feet and a gingham dress, leaned against the kitchen sink with a half-empty glass in hand, observing that Lenka, who was sitting on the kitchen’s only stool, had yet to take a sip of the wine Diana had poured for her half an hour earlier. Questions were also raised by the width of the purple swing top Lenka wore, and which Diana was fairly sure was brand-new.
“I’m glad you’re going away, actually, Di,” Richard said, with a grin.
Richard was the only person alive who was allowed to shorten Diana’s name in this way. That she let him get away with it was a concession to the importance of his friendship with Arie, which dated back to grade eight, when Richard had arrived from the UK, thickly bespectacled, with a mouthful of braces and an accent that was interpreted as insufferably stuck-up. The braces and the accent were long gone, of course, and for some years the spectacles had been a good deal more Dolce & Gabbana than Coke bottle.
“Well, thanks for that charming sentiment, Richie-poo.” Just because she tolerated him calling her “Di” didn’t mean she wasn’t going to fight back.
“He reckons he gets more work out of me when you’re not here,” Arie said, sprinkling a pizza with a liberal quantity of sliced jalapeños.
“I do,” Richard insisted. “The only time you log more hours than me is when Di’s overseas. I love it! Get to put my feet up for once.”
It was five years since Arie had quit his job at the Conservatorium to go into partnership with Richard in their own web development company. Bit by bit,...
About the Author-
Minnie Darke is the internationally acclaimed author of Star-Crossed, which was published in more than 30 countries. She lives in Tasmania with her family, and there is always music.
Reviews-
May 1, 2020
Even as Australian Arie mourns the death of longtime fianc�e Diana, a world-skimming concert pianist, Scottish lass Evie gives up on poetry and looks to settle down. They are finally linked by a song Diana wrote for Arie, passed from musician to musician. Following Star-Crossed; a Random House Book Club selection.
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from August 17, 2020 With this sweeping romance, Darke (Star-Crossed) spins a tender tribute to the healing powers of love and music. For seven years, gentle Australian computer whiz Arie Johnson and fiery concert pianist and composer Diana Clare have been each other’s “Amen.” While away on a concert tour, Diana finally finds the perfect closing sequence to a love song she’s been writing when she decides to accept Arie’s marriage proposal—only to die in a plane crash on her way back to Australia. Darke traces Diana’s final song as it makes its way around the world helping strangers heal their heartaches over the next two years: businessman and pianist Bene Romero heard Diana play just before she died and takes the melody home to London, where he plays it to his fractious teenager, Beatrix. Beatrix then performs it with her first love, Felix Carter, in an Edinburgh train station. After hearing them in passing, Tasmanian poet Evie Greenlees brings the song full circle when she returns to Australia and meets the still grieving Arie. Darke’s accomplished plotting, colorful settings, and keen insights into love and loss make for an outstanding romantic panorama. Readers will be wowed. Agent: Dan Lazar, Writer’s House.
October 1, 2020 Music is the language of love in Darke's latest (after Star-Crossed, 2019). Piano phenom Diana Clare always found it easiest to express her emotions through music. Before her life is cut tragically short, she plays a love song for her fianc� Arie, not knowing that it will be the only time she'll play it for him. The song travels with Diana to Singapore, where she leaves her songbook on a hotel piano. Picked up by another traveler, the book travels to Scotland, where poet Evie Greenlees hears the song from it in a train station. Evie takes what she remembers of the song and her wanderlust back to Australia, where she's overheard playing it by her neighbor?Arie. As the song brings Arie and Evie closer, it will bring others across the world together when I love you is hard to say. Written with engaging prose and charming characters, The Lost Love Song is a sweet romance that shows the power of music during times of both immense joy and sadness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
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Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
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