If I Stay by Gayle Forman
What would you do if you had to choose?

Hardcover, 201 pages

Published April 2nd 2009 by Dutton Juvenile

ISBN

0525421033 (ISBN13: 9780525421030)

Summary:

 On a day that started like any other.......

Mia had everything: a loving family, a gorgeous, adoring boyfriend, and a bright future full of music and full of choices. Then, in an instant, almost all of that is taken from her. Caught between life and death, between a happy past and unknowable future, Mia spends one critical day contemplating the only decision she has left-the most important she'll ever make.

Simultaneously tragic and hopeful, this is a romantic, riveting, and ultimately uplifting story about memory, music, living, dying and loving. 

What I Thought: 3.7 stars

   

"Sometimes you make the choices and sometimes the choices make you."

 

This was a beautifully written tale of life in between death and reality. Through out this book there were flashbacks and then she would see things through her spirits eyes. It was a fresh take on the spirit world that I'm really not used to experiencing. It was kinda like magic.
In the real world she and her boyfriend were soul mates, but they were growing apart and didn't realize how much they needed each other. Her almost death made them both realize how much they needed each other, how what they felt wasn't just a passing faze. 

"Play me like your cello" -Adam

 
The deaths of her family: I felt like I was supposed to cry, but there wasn't enough detail and getting them to go off of.

 "I realized now that dying was easy. Living is hard."-Mia

 I mean yeah, I totally loved them and they were an amazing addition. Addition. Notice how I didn't say character. In truth, I felt more connected to her grandparents than her parents. Her brother though.....I wanted to cry. So bad. But the tears wouldn't come. I think I may have been in shock although I sorta was expecting it.
Her boyfriend... He was just what the story needed. Together they were the odd couple but they complimented the other perfectly. 

 “If you stay, I'll do whatever you want. I'll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I'll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would be too painful, that maybe it'd be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I'd do it. I can lose you like that if I don't lose you today. I'll let you go. If you stay.”-Adam (at the near end of the novel)

 It was so cute.Their relationship was rocky, but they were the forever kind of love. They were the kind of love that people cross oceans for, the kind that the butterflies in your stomach never stop. They were the kind of love that even a kiss of the forehead can be seen as the most romantic thing ever.  They were both talented musicians and was just what the other needed. 

"Please Mia. Don't make me write a song."-Adam

And the ending was a major cliff-hanger, but it was the good kind.
It was the kind that makes you hope.

“And that's just it, isn't it? That's how we manage to survive the loss. Because love, it never dies, it never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it.” 

 

What I really loved was the lengths that Adam went to to make sure he saw Mia. He was the dream boyfriend, the kind that romantics write songs about and the kind that every girl wants to have. He was messed up, adoring, not perfect, amazing, loving, caring, wonderful, dreamy, committed.

“Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I'm feeling things at last. I'm feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill.”

 

 Overall, I wish this book had more emotion. It was a good, easy read though. Totally worth my time. 

 

          If you loved this read the next book in the series:

  where she went



http://www.gayleforman.com/



Jackie