If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Countless student readers + being made into a motion picture = why I chose to pick up If I Stay by Gayle Forman.

The equation was simple really.  And the book did not disappoint.  I thought it was a sweet story, beautifully written, and full of emotion.  I think every high school girl would appreciate this novel.

So here is the premise: Mia is a teenager who is in a car accident with her family.  Both of her parents die on impact and her younger brother passes later at the hospital.  The book is told from her perspective while she is in limbo.  She watches the doctors and nurses working on her body; she watches her extended family, friends, and boyfriend gather around her; she decides whether to keep fighting to live or whether to join her family on the other side.  Don't worry - I won't spoil the ending.

I have not seen the movie yet (shocking considering I have three small children at home), but did find the book trailer online:

If you have any interest in this book, you should most definitely watch the  trailer.  I will say that the girl who plays Mia is exactly how I imagined her, from the looks all the way to her voice.  The character who plays Adam, however, was just not what I envisioned while I read.  Not that this is a bad thing.  It's just not what I was expecting.

I enjoyed this book so much that I already visited the MHS learning commons this morning to check out the sequel, Where She Went.  I'm not very far yet, but the most obvious difference is that this book is told from Adam's perspective and not Mia's.  I'm interested to hear his perspective on the situation.

I'll leave you with a line that showed the young love between Mia and Adam.  One of the lines that I thought was just the sweetest: “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.”  This was Adam talking to Mia while she was comatose.  I know in my last post I wrote about the love between Eleanor and Park was not believable.  This love though...it just was.

Eleanor and Park

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell was a book that many of my students read last year.  I won a free copy from Goodreads.  Did you know they have giveaways?  And as soon as my copy arrived it went from one student to the next to the next.  I even had a girl ask me if she could borrow it over the summer to use it for her summer reading project.  So needless to say, once it was finally back in my possession, I had pretty high expectations.


To be honest, I'm not sure they were met.  I did finish the book, however there were several elements about the book that just bothered me a bit.


#1: I almost put it down within the first few pages due to  the overuse of foul language.  The overuse of foul language in YA books drives me nuts.  Totally unnecessary and really just annoying to read.


#2: I had a hard time believing the love between these two characters.  They seemed so unlike each other that I had a hard time seeing the connection and really believing two characters like Eleanor and Park would fall for each other.


#3: (This one is totally my own fault)  I just took too long to read it.  I only read this while at school and so it was very disconnected for me because I usually would only read it for ten minutes at a time and never gave myself the chance to get lost in the story and the characters.


Despite these observations, I do still think the book has many redeeming qualities and would appeal to a lot of YA readers, so I'll also discuss the pros.


#1: It was told from two different perspectives and switched chapters between Eleanor and Park.  I love when authors do this, as it  allows the readers to truly understand multiple characters since you see their inner thoughts.


#2: The characterization in general.  We've been discussing how authors create round characters by utilizing all five methods of characterization and this author has a good grasp on this.  I loved both characters.  I just didn't see their love for each other.


#3: Figurative language, similes, and metaphors.  Rainbow Rowell can write.  Here is one example of the kind of writing you might see:


"Or maybe, he thought now, he just didn't recognize all those other girls.  The way a computer drive will spit out a disk if it doesn't recognize the formatting.  When he touched Eleanor's hand, he recognized her.  He knew."

So there you have it.  The pros and cons of Eleanor and Park.  On to my next book...