Review: If I Stay by Gayle Forman

The Premise: If I Stay is the first part of a two part duo-logy from the author Gayle Forman. It follows the protagonist Mia Hall, as she faces the aftermath of a tragic car accident which takes the lives of her mother and father, and possibly young brother. The novel is comprised with a series of flashbacks which feature moments between Mia and her boyfriend Adam, flashbacks of Mia and her family members and flashbacks of Mia with a significant part of her life: her music. The car accident happens fairly early on in the book and the rest of the book, Mia is in a type of coma where she like a ghost and can see all the events and hear the people around her, but not actually experience all the moments. The flashbacks and the experiences in the hospital, lead Mia to decide the ultimate question, if I stay?.

My overall thoughts and review: I picked this book up because I saw the trailer for it. I own the other books written by Forman, but I have not gotten around the chance to read them yet, but I participated in a read-a-thon last week and decided why not to go ahead and read this. It looked really interesting and terrifyingly heartbreaking from the movie trailer, and the book only reaffirmed that a tenfold. The book was really interesting because although the crash occurs quite early on, the flashbacks helped build character and only made you feel more for the situation at hand. Although it follows Mia, the reader cannot help but mourn her very wonderfully multi-dimensional family that suffered in the accident. Learning more about her mother and father were especially some of my favorite moments. Also, Adam. He was just incredibly lovely and the flashbacks that catalogued how their relationship came to be were extremely heartwarming. It wasn't the typical YA novel of "insta-love" but it was truly a very interesting and deep relationship, where both found common ground in music, and although music at opposite ends of the spectrum one might think, it was so beautiful how they both came together. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it ended in such a nice way that opens up for the next book in the two-part duology. I highly recommend giving this a read, it reminded me of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

Rating of the book: 4/5 stars.

The movie for the book will come out soon and here is the trailer for it!


A review for Where She Went will be up shortly! ;)