Nicholas Sparks Reveals How Miley Cyrus Amazed Him with Her ‘Incredible Talent’ on The Last Song Set (Exclusive) .Linh

Nicholas Sparks has worked with some great actors throughout his career, but one who really surprised him was Miley Cyrus.

Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE, the North Carolina-based author, 58, fondly recalls working alongside the Grammy-winning singer on the set of his book-to-movie adaptation of The Last Song.

At the time, Cyrus had already solidified herself as a global pop star with her role on Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana, though Sparks notes that she was adamant about showing off her acting chops in his film.

As Sparks wrote the screenplay for the movie, he tells PEOPLE that he discussed with Cyrus how much she wanted music to be a part of the story. Though her character Ronnie does play the piano, Sparks notes it was “clear that she wanted to act.”

“She preferred that it is just primarily piano because she didn’t want like one of the old Elvis singing movies. She wanted to act, and I thought she did a wonderful job,” he says.

Though he does recall one specific musical moment in which Cyrus left him in complete awe.

“So she had a scene where she had to play the piano. It looked tough to me, right? I said, ‘I didn’t know you could play the piano.’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, I didn’t. I had to learn yesterday. It took me hours.’ I’m like, ‘Hours, to do that, what you just did? Hours? It’d take me weeks to do that.’ ”

“But she’s incredibly skilled and talented, and I know she works very hard at music,” he adds of the actress, who was just named the youngest Disney Legend.

“There are some young people that really just surprise you with their staggering talent, whether it’s in the Olympics or whether it’s in something like music. And it was pretty clear that she was really good.”

From his past novels to his new ones like Counting Miracles, Sparks thinks audiences still resonate with his work today because the stories hold one common theme: they’re about the human experience.

“People change less than the world changes, right? The world moves on, but people and their emotions and what they go through, that evolves a lot more slowly,” he notes. “So what I write feels real because people feel curiosity or interest or attraction or infatuation or love or sadness or anger. And I try to have my novels include a lot of those elements so they feel very real. I just try to package them with each novel in entirely different ways in the hopes that I can surprise the reader.”