Minnie Darke - The Lost Love Song

Arie and Diana were destined to be together.
Arie falls for Diana in a heartbeat. Their love creates a life for them, a marriage and a home. Pianist Diana wants to capture this in a song for Arie.
But that’s not where the story ends…
After Diana debuts their song to a room full of strangers, tragedy strikes and Arie never gets to hear it.
There’s still a verse to come.
Diana’s melody lives beyond her and the lost love song begins to find its way back home. Can it help Arie to find new hope, and a new love?

Comment: I had this book in the pile since 2020. No idea anymore why I've added it, but it probably had to do with the male protagonist finding love again after the death of his partner. If not for this, who knows...?

Arie and Diana met and their connection was immediate. They became a couple and their lives pretty much revolved around her schedules as a professional pianist. Tragically, she dies in a plane crash and now Arie has to deal with mourning and with life is supposed to be now. As he goes on with his days, several other characters also go on with theirs and the point all have in common is the love song Diana started to write and left on a notebook... 

Evie is an Australian native who has been aimless in the world but after a series of disappointing experiences, she decides to go back home and see if she can finally start on roots on something. It's by chance she meets Arie, as the next-door neighbor to the house she rented but if at first they seem to hit if off, suddenly Arie seems uncertain... is this time for Evie to move on, once more?

Who said there are no coincidences in life? And if nothing can be a coincidence, what are the odds that, for no premeditated reason except picking out some titles to suit a challenge, I'd choose - out of the several ebooks in my virtual pile - two books to be read one after the other, in which the main female character is called Evie and that by incredible chance, they are both poets???

I really had to get this out of my chest. It has happened in the past that I read a book, then the next has some sort of detail/element that somehow could be linked to the previous book... I mean, what fortuity is this? Still, it has happened and this new situation just seemed too much.

Apart from this, I should say that in general terms, I felt as confused by some of this Evie's traits as I did with the Evie from the book I had read before, as in that they are both poets and their attitude in life seems a little too vague and indefinite... I can, from a realistic POV , accept that not everyone is always aware of what they want to do and how - me included! - but in novels when characters have these huge doubts and that expands to their way of behaving, they become a little hard to appreciate. I've struggled to see how Evie could be so fine with going from place to place without a plan. It's not her traveling I think is wrong, but that she doesn't have any obvious plan... 

Evie is one of several characters who is affected by the song Diana started to write for Arie. Before she dies, Diana left a notebook in a piano in Singapore, and from there on, the notebook traveled from person to person - sometimes not the notebook, only the sounds reproduced because most characters in this book play some instrument - and the song's journey is a fit metaphor for the power of chance: one thing touches one person one way, then goes on to touch another causing a slight variation and so on. I did like this idea that most characters would be connected by a song somehow and that the root of it is love, but the execution didn't win me over.

My problem with this novel is the writing style. Things are written with that sense of foreshadowing in which we see the character do this or that and we just know something will happen because of/in reaction to something else. This gives the characters almost a sense of hopelessness in their actions, after all something will happen anyway and we cannot have them choosing other options. When this happened in the first chapter, when Diana dies, it was rather poetic... but then, extending this style to all the novel made it seem static. It also gave me the feeling the characters were not as developed as they could.

Evie is a confusing, almost nomad-like type of character. I might not understand her completely but I can see where the author went with her personality. As for Arie, however, he is just too... monochromatic. He is a good guy, loves Diana and mourns her with the same intensity but his personality doesn't seem to vary from what he is embodying. I kind of wanted to see him do other things and I wanted his interactions with Evie to be less serious and meditative. I know, I often complain about this lack in other novels, but here, with the writing style, it went too far.

Their romance was very, very superficial to me. Even with all the song and poetry comparisons. It didn't feel they had enough time to get to know one another, and the things they share seem as seen from a dreamlike state, vague and uncertain. I actually considered that this story would result in a great drama, if the author wanted... instead, she went with the romance idea and the end was not that special to me. There is even a reference to the destiny of the song that united all the characters and how the links between strangers can be stronger than we imagine, but for me this whole mix of plot and message intended was already too average for me to enjoy more.

As a first attempt by the author, this wasn't as great as I imagined, but it wasn't that bad either. I'll check out her other titles... perhaps a different one might appeal more to me.

Grade: 6/10