Book Review - If I Stay by Gayle Foreman

If I Stay by Gayle Forman


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


If I could give this book a 3.5 stars with Goodreads rating system, I would. I definitely liked this book. It's different from the books that I've been reading lately. It was a quick read and kept me interested pretty much through the whole thing.

This book tells the story of Mia. She is 17 and a senior in highschool. She's not one of those superficial "silly" girls. She comes across as a very grounded person. Mia plays the cello. She is very good at it. She has a best friend named Kim and a boyfriend named Adam. He is a freshman in college and plays in a band that is starting to take off. Her parents are not the typical parents. Her dad used to be in a band that had some notoriety... I believe they put out several cds. Her mom was a kind of punk rock wild child back in the day. So the whole family, including her boyfriend Adam, are heavily involved in music. Music plays a big part in this book... which certainly adds an interesting aspect to it.

So basically the premise of this story is the Mia and her family (mom, dad, and little brother) stay home from work and school for a snow day. They decide to get out of the house and end up in a bad car accident. Mia then finds herself in an out of body experience. She is like a "ghost". She can see everything that is going on, hear everything that people are saying, but her actually body is in a coma. It's kind of cool because Mia gets to see the reactions of her boyfriend, best friend, grand parents, extended family, and friends. You know everyone always wonders how people would act if they were seriously injured or died... and she kind of gets to experience this for herself.

The book consists of flashbacks from Mia's memories which really help you to get to know all of the characters and love them. Then it goes back to present time, where all of these characters are dealing with the reprecussions of the car accident. You experience all of this from Mia's perspective.

This book centrally deals with death. So it's not really a warm, fuzzy feeling book. But it is good. It tells a good story, makes you fall in love this little family and group of people, and you will cry for them. =)

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