Review: The Last Love Song by Kalie Halford

A queer YA Mamma Mia! with a dash of Maureen Johnson, The Last Love Song celebrates the music of an uncertain heart—perfect for fans of Nina LaCour, Laura Taylor Namey, and Emma Lord.

After high school graduation, Mia Peters faces a summer full of painful goodbyes. Songwriting is her only solace. Everyone she knows is moving on, including Britt, her biggest supporter … and kind-of-sort-of girlfriend. Britt keeps pushing Mia to go bigger and do better than their small town, but Mia can’t imagine a life beyond Sunset Cove. Besides, she refuses to follow in the footsteps of her late mother—country music star Tori Rose—who abandoned her family to pursue her dream, leaving Mia and her two grandmothers alone.

Desperate for a sign of what might lie ahead, Mia finds the opposite—a mysterious letter from the past, addressed to her in her mother’s handwriting. It turns out to be the first of many. One by one they lead Mia on a wild scavenger hunt through a Sunset Cove she never knew, buried under the memorializing that has frozen her mother in time. Each new discovery brings Mia closer to the real Tori Rose, but with the clock ticking on Britt’s departure, Mia knows she is running out of time.
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With the summer winding down, Mia must decide if she is ready to face the present, confront her feelings, and forge the destiny she truly wants. A dazzlingly soulful debut, The Last Love Song is perfect for anyone who’s ever tried to decode the clues in the lead-up to a new Taylor Swift album.

• Title: The Last Love Song
• Author:  Kalie Holford
• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Publication Date: April 9th 2024
• Genre: Romance, Contemporary 
• Targeted Age Range: YA
• Content Warnings: Death of a parent (past), mentions of infertility, illness, emesis, parental abandonment, grief
• Rating: ★★★★

While I see why people would consider this a romance-centric novel — the romance between Mia and Britt is definitely a large part of it — I think that this is a coming-of-age novel ahead of anything else. The heart of this story is Mia learning about herself, finding a way to connect to her mother, and following her heart.

I loved the format and storytelling of The Last Love Song. We know that I love a good seaside town story, and I loved the vibe of Sunset Cove — it kind of reminded me of Horseshoe Bay for my fellow Nancy Drew CW fans. With this book centering around Mia learning more about her country music star mother, you know that music is going to be involved and I loved that the sections of the book were split into tracks. I thought that was really fun and seeing how the section tracks worked into the story was so cool. 

If a book is about music or a musician, I want music fully involved in the story and storytelling, and I think Holford really delivered on that. Aside from having the sections of the book split into tracks and lyrics from Tori Rose’s songs starting each section, there were song lyrics, Mia was a songwriter, Bri (Mia’s best friend/sometimes hook up/eventual girlfriend) was the lead singer of the band that Mia wrote songs for, and of course, Holford included a playlist at the end of the book. Music was woven into every aspect of this book. Because of that, I constantly had song lyrics running through my head while reading and I put some of the songs that I thought of in a little playlist if you wanna check it out (some of these songs were also on Holford’s official playlist, which I thought was pretty cool)

While I liked Mia as a main character I did feel a bit of a disconnect from her. There were many times when she would talk about how she always “ruined” things, and while I see where that was coming from — I’m sure much of that came from growing up without her mother and believing that her mother may have regretted having her — and could empathize with her, I don’t know if I ever felt the things that she was talking about if that makes sense. This is a general critique that I had of the book, while there were moments that made me emotional, I didn’t feel as emotionally connected and/or invested as I hoped and expected. Though I will say, there was a moment later on in the book that brought a tear to my eye and I do think that it was beautifully written.

Even though I wasn’t as emotionally invested as I wanted to be, I did like following Mia’s journey and I liked all of the characters. I always talk about how I love stories where the main character has a close relationship with their grandparents, so I loved that Mia was raised by her grandmothers and was so close to them. I also did not know that we would be getting lesbian grandmothers in this one and that was the best surprise — this is when you find out that I didn’t bother reading the description, all I needed to know was that it had Mamma Mia vibes. I loved them, they were so cute. I thought Tori Rose was a super interesting character, and I loved the chapters that were her diary entries because I was so curious about what happened to her and how she skyrocketed to fame. 

The dual timeline really worked for me, and I was invested in both timelines. I liked getting to watch Mia grow throughout the process of searching for these clues that her mother left her, and I loved learning more about Tori Rose with Mia. Holford did a great job of keeping both timelines interesting and switching back and forth in a way that makes sense. I was also glad that the discoveries happened for the reader and Mia at the same time, as opposed to us learning something in the past and Mia learning it a few chapters later. 

The Last Love Song is Holford’s debut novel, and there were moments where I felt that way. The pacing was a little funky for me, and I think that we could’ve delved deeper into certain aspects of the story. That being said, I will definitely check out Holford’s future works because there were a lot of things that I really enjoyed about this story. It was an easy book to get lost in; when I was reading it I couldn’t stop reading it, and when I wasn’t reading it I wanted to be reading it. There were some beautiful quotes, I loved “She’s the personification of a love song, and I can’t get her out of my head” — what a perfect quote in a book about music. And “She didn’t end the day she died” really got me, and is a line that will stay with me for a while.

I’d definitely recommend The Last Love Song to fans of Morgan Matson and Emma Lord, as well as anyone who enjoys a story about staying true to yourself and following your dreams.

Links for The Last Love Song: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop