Review of If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Review of Gayle Forman's If I Stay

Release Date: April 6th, 2010

Synopsis as found on GoodReads.com:

Just listen, Adam says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel.

I open my eyes wide now.
I sit up as much as I can.
And I listen.

Stay, he says.

Choices. Seventeen-year-old Mia is faced with some tough ones: Stay true to her first love—music—even if it means losing her boyfriend and leaving her family and friends behind?

Then one February morning Mia goes for a drive with her family, and in an instant, everything changes. Suddenly, all the choices are gone, except one. And it's the only one that matters.

If I Stay is a heartachingly beautiful book about the power of love, the true meaning of family, and the choices we all make.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This beautifully written book is told in flashbacks through the eyes of a girl having an out of body experience while dying in a hospital bed after a car accident kills her entire family. This heart wrenching story had me crying by the second chapter and I wouldn't set it down until I was finished reading the entire book.

I decided to read this book after I saw the preview for the movie (while inside the theater to see The Fault in Our Stars) that will be released in August. The movie preview alone had me tearing up, so when by the second chapter you know about the most dramatic moment in Mia's entire life, you can expect that I was balling like a baby.

Since the version of the book I purchased is of a more recent print, it has a lot of Q & A's for the classroom in the back as well as some other extras, which I did not know about until I was 100 or so pages from the end & the story ends. So my only complaint with the entire book is that I was expecting more story and when the journey ended abruptly & with finality, I was shocked... but I guess I will just have to read the sequel, Where She Went, to get the closure I need.