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.