Book Review - If I Stay by Gayle Forman

It's rare that a tearjerker is this good, but that's a testament to what Gayle Forman achieved with this book, If I Stay, her second novel. Mia's a high school senior, an accomplished cellist, and the girlfriend of the lead singer/guitarist of the band Rising Star that's just gotten their huge break. A tiny snow storm--okay, a snowflake-- in Oregon means a day off from school, which gets Mia, her mom, her dad, and her younger brother Teddy out of the house. They're on the way to Mia's parent's friend's house when absolute tragedy strikes. In an instant, Mia's mom and dad are deceased, her brother is injured and Mia--well, Mia's suddenly an on-looker, looking down on this horrible scene and trying to understand what just happened. Is she dead? Is she alive?

It turns out that Mia is in fact in a coma, hanging on the precipice between life and death, and it also turns out that it's her decision: if she stays. Does she want to stay in a world that took away her incredible mother and father?

As Mia shares, in that perfect, anecdotal story kind of way, more about her family and her life, you start to realize everything she's lost, and I'm probably not alone in saying, it hits you in a very real place. Her parents are unique, idiosyncratic people, and their absence will make life enormously hard for Mia, if she chooses it.

I don't want to give away the ending, but I hope it's clear at this point how much I absolutely loved this book. Good luck finding it on the shelf. It made its debut on the NYTimes Bestseller list, and you can make your holds online.