Gayle Forman

This novel begins in 1987 in Venice Beach, California. Ten-year-old Beatrice “Bug” Contreras is upset to find out that her 14-year-old brother Daniel no longer wants to hang out with *her* all summer - he has more "grown-up" interests now and needs “space.” This development was doubly punishing for Bug, who loved hanging out with her brother and loved the beach, but wasn’t allowed to go by herself. She resented Danny mightily for it, and protested to her mom it wasn’t fair, but show more as her mother always pointed out to her, “Life isn’t fair. The most you can hope for is that it’s just.”

Then she found out that 11-year old Frankie was coming from Ohio to spend the summer with his Uncle Phillip, who was Bug’s upstairs neighbor. Bug thought perhaps Frankie could fill Daniel's role for Bug, but Frankie didn’t seem much interested in the beach. Rather, Frankie rather was focused on helping to find out the identity of the "Midnight Marauder," a mysterious serial killer in the area. In fact, it seemed to Bug she had nothing in common with Frankie, but they were destined to spend the summer together, and Bug had to learn to adjust. Why didn’t Frankie agree to like what Bug liked? How could Frankie not? Part of that adjustment was coming to understand the world didn’t revolve around her and her interests and wishes.

Bug faced other problems that summer. The Contreras family, made up of Mama, Bug, and Danny, was mixed-race - at least the kids were; their mother was white, but their father had been Salvadoran. The skinheads on the beach only saw brown skin, and called them “Mexican monkeys,” especially Danny, who looked more like his father than Bug did.

(Bug both resented that Danny looked more like him, but also was glad she didn’t. All her feelings were confused. Her father, about whom she heard so much, had died in a car accident seven weeks before she was born. “That,” Bug thought, “was a kind of unfair that hurt too much to speak of.”)

The skinheads also threatened Mama in a sexually abusive way. Bug hated them, but Mama said she felt sorry for them:

“People who need to exert force to make themselves feel strong are weak. They’re scared people who need to scare people. It’s pretty pathetic when you think about it.”

And there seemed to be secrets everywhere to which Bug was not privy. Something bad happened to Phillip - no one would tell her what - and Mama needed to stay in his apartment to help him. Mama’s sister arrived to take care of Bug and Frankie, albeit begrudgingly. Bug knew everyone was hiding something, and part of that had to do with the history of her family.

Bug finally learned the truth about all the mysteries surrounding her. The most important things she found out though, were that stereotypes had nothing to do with the complexity of human beings, and that family is better defined as those who love and care for you, rather than those who are just related by blood. Or as Lin-Manuel Miranda would say, love is love is love is love.

Evaluation: I was not disappointed at all in this charming coming-of-age middle grade debut by Forman. It is designated for kids 9-12, but I loved it, and would recommend it for all readers. As a bonus, the depiction of Venice Beach, California in the late 1980s captures precisely that moment in time and what it was like. show less

DNF at 57%. I gave the audiobook two days' worth of dog walks, which was a day more than I was inclined to do. I hated pretty much everything about it from the jump: the too-cute punk/hipster family (which really left me with the impression that Forman was trying too hard at a charmingly quaint - in a Leave It To Beaver kind of way - yet modern/liberal/progressive family unit); the cringe-worthy dialogue; Mia's manufactured sense of alienation (your parents play rock and you prefer show more classical? you poor thing!); and the saccharine story line. But worst of all was the narrator, who sailed through the reading with a smugly bemused air. Her Teddy and Brooke impressions made me want to scramble my brains with an ice pick. Maybe I would have liked this story better had I read it myself, but only just barely.

To be fair, YA Romance isn't normally my genre, but between the positive buzz and the recent movie adaptation, I thought I'd give If I Stay a try. The best I can say is at least I saved myself from suffering through the movie version. show less

Short and unbearably sweet. Like cavity-inducing, candy and apple pie, stars and stripes saccharine. I liked the premise of a young girl whose life was cut short at seventeen getting to come back to her family, but instead of Les Revenants we get Touched by an Angel, or worse, Earth Angel with Erik Estrada.

My main issue was the eye-watering perfection of the family, like Stephen King on one of his nostalgic jags. Happily married parents who met at high school, teen proms and corsages, talk show more of 'premarital sex', attending church - the only detail that really sets the story at a particular date is the use of mobile phones and social media, otherwise Amber could have died and returned at any point between the 1950s and the modern day. The depressing cycle of meeting your 'forever love' and resigning life to getting married and having babies (in that order) even continues with Amber and lumbering lover Calvin (who, disturbingly, immediately tries to get in her seventeen year old pants when they reunite). I cheered when her sister came out and had a girlfriend!

The message of the story is also syrupy - Amber returns to patch up her parents' marriage, bring her aunt back to her hometown and make sure her sister is happy (she's the best of the bunch, thanks) - and the author even tags on a few unnecessary coincidences at the end, to make sure everyone has the chance of marriage and 'family'. Gag.

Probably good therapy for teens who might be grieving, like feeding kids medicine that is 90% sugar, but a bit too heavy-handed for me. show less

Last month I fell in love with the sparse, disconnected prose and honesty of "If I Stay". The sequel, "Where She Went", is a different creature entirely.

Told from the brutally honest point of view of Adam, who was Mia's high-school boyfriend in "If I Stay", it's the bitter, angry counterpart to Mia's calm detachment.

Three years after Mia's accident, Adam's channeled his angst into a multi-million selling album. He's a hit rockstar with a gorgeous movie star girlfriend, and paparazzi follow show more him everywhere.

He's also very clearly unwell - he's fighting with everyone and pushing his band away, lashing out at reporters, on medication for panic attacks, obsessing over Mia, and hating every moment of his rich-and-famous life.

On a one-night stop in New York before he embarks on a dreaded European tour, Adam finds out that cellist Mia, now a rising star in the classical music scene, is playing in the city. She spots him at her concert, and they end up face-to-face for the first time in free years.

Is one evening in New York enough time to repair all the damage they've been through?

This is a very different story from "If I Stay" - it's a much more self-constrained story about the two characters. I adored it - just like in "If I Stay", every little interaction is brimming with character revealing-details. Adam's narrative is a perfect example of a guy with issues, and it never pulls any punches. The dialogue is brilliant, but for the opposite reason - while Adam's narrative is wordy and honest, the spoken words that follow are clipped and false. A perfect example of the contrast between what we think and what we say.

Recommended for fans of: "Before I Fall" by Lauren Oliver, "If I Stay"

A copy of this book was provided for review by the lovely people at Random House. show less