If I Stay

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 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 show more 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

I started this book yesterday and by the time I was halfway through, not only was I tearing up, I mentioned to Jaime of The Perpetual Pageturner and The Broke and Bookish that I was certain that I was going to be haunted by this book for a very long time, no matter how the book ended. This morning I put the book down because I was crying on the kitchen floor, ten pages from the end. TEN PAGES. I even emailed my boyfriend to tell him about it. Finally, this evening I read the last ten pages. My first comment? "I have no words." I have cried over quite a few books in my time, but I was sobbing over this one. It was so intense.

I loved the family in this book. I think that's one of the things that will haunt me. The parents were show more unconventional, but loved their children dearly and were raising them to be true to not only themselves, but to pursue the things that made them happy. The grandparents are more traditional, but just as wonderful. It was a moment with the grandfather that started the tears for me as well.

I'm not going to give away any of the plot, because I want you all to go into it kind of blankly (if you can) because I did and it was so worth it. I will say that if you're even remotely thinking about this book, DO IT! DO IT NOW!!!

I really truly don't think that I've read a book like this before. I was so deeply moved. The pacing of the novel was a little jumbled, which usually turns me off, but with If I Stay, it really seemed to work. The novel is divided by segments of time. Part of the novel is what's happening in the moment, and the other part is flashbacks interspersed throughout the novel that show events leading up to what's happening in real time. You learn so much about the characters in each format so it was a wonderfully used technique.

The sequel Where She Went comes out in a few days. I'm going to buy it the day of it's release, but I may need a few additional days to recover before diving into the sequel. I'm not sure my emotions could take it. But I NEED to know what happens!! show less

WOW. I finished this book feeling a myriad of emotions. My boyfriend looked over to ask me how it was as he heard me close the book, in the signature way I do upon finishing a book, and saw me sitting there with tears streaming down my face. He started to ask about it and I just started mumbling incoherent things and slammed the book on the table and kept saying, "Wow. Just wow" and "I'm never going to freaking be able to wait until April to get my hands on the next book." This book was pretty powerful for me.

I need to first point out that if you see the paperback copy of this book and notice that there is a blurb by USA Today saying "Will appeal to fans of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight"---make sure you ignore this. Apparently whoever show more wrote this blurb either read the wrong book or was all hopped up on something. Just saying. Yes, there is a romantic element to this book, but I did not see any sparkly vampires or Taylor Lautner-esque werewolves roaming the pages of this book. Aside from the romantic aspect, which is a part of many books, I could not really grasp that correlation. So please, I beg you to listen to ME and not USA Today. While we are on the topic of the romantic element, it is a sweet romance that isn't annoying or over the top. I loved their relationship. It makes you love "love" and appreciate it in the rawest of moments.

If I Stay is emotionally gripping and will genuinely move you. I think that it is realistic nature of the tragedy that gets to you because we've all either experienced something similar or have seen it on the news. It's one of those truly tragic stories that you know could happen to you--and that is frightening. I'm such a worrier and think about death too much anyways because of grief that I have experienced in my own life so this one hit me hard. Nobody wants to start thinking about losing loved ones but this book certainly elicits strong enough emotions to carry over into that kind of thinking. It felt authentic and real rather than contrived like the author was playing puppeteer to your heartstrings.

Gayle Forman wasted NO time in delivering the blow. It took me off guard like any tragedy does in real life--one moment life is just rolling on and BAM. When everything happened I said, outloud, "Well, SHIT." I don't know if I said it to my boyfriend or just to myself outloud but I couldn't keep it in but from that moment until I finished this book four hours later, I felt completely invested in the life of Mia and her family. I felt like I was a part of this tragedy and being in Mia's head was no easier. I kept asking myself what I would do. I couldn't come up with a clear answer even having dealt with situations were I had to keep on trucking through life without someone.

I thought Forman did an excellent job balancing the present with memories from the past and learning more about her family, friends and Adam made it all the harder. I felt the weight and the importance of Mia's decision. I love when an author makes me feel so connected to characters! This isn't a book where things are happening over a span of time. It's kind of slow-moving but this makes sense and I never found myself bored at all despite the fact that the present takes place in a span of 24 hours. I won't say much about the ending but I'm going to cry, scream and kick to get my hands on an ARC of the next book so I don't have to wait until April 2011. There is just no way I can do that.

My final thought: Gayle Forman has created an emotionally stirring novel that will leave you contemplating life, love and those moments that matter. There is much beauty alongside the sadness of loss and the complexity of grief; the glimmer of hope and beauty is what keeps you from having a complete mental breakdown while reading this book. It's that real. If you are an emotional person like myself or have experienced loss, you'll need to break out the box of tissues. Make sure it's the extra soft kind. show less

What can I say? This was pretty much flawless.

In the beginning of the story, 17-year old Mia, a talented cellist and a bit of a misfit, gets in a car accident. Her aging punk rocker parents are killed instantly, her 7-year old brother dies soon after, and Mia is gravely injured. She goes into a coma and finds herself wandering around without her body for a few days. She watches her friends and extended family keep vigil at the hospital, reminisces about her life so far, and tries to decide whether to go back to her body and face grief and pain, or stop fighting and join her family in death.

This book was extremely engaging and believable. She captured the way teenagers talk without being condescending or annoying. Yes, an 18-year old show more boy WOULD probably refer to Yo-Yo Ma as "Yo Mama." That sort of detail makes the book so enjoyable to read. Also, I want to know how I can join this magical world where family members always support you and really seem to understand you.

There was also a very sweet romantic aspect with classical music geek Mia and her rocker boyfriend Adam, who is very kindhearted and sweet. There was an amazing scene of sensuality where Mia and Adam take turns playing each other's unclothed bodies like their instrument of choice (cello and guitar, respectively). There's also quite a bit of swearing and talk of underage drinking that make this book a good recommendation for older teens. show less

I'm halfway through this one at the moment, and still annoyed at this book. It's ridiculously saccharine sweet, despite being about a teen girl - with sooooooo much potential! - in a coma, watching her family mourn her as she reflects upon her wonderful life.

From the moment on the first page when Mia's dad taps on his pipe (he does so ironically, because he's so damn hipster cool, as he used to be a punk rocker, but is now a middle-school English teacher and ironically smokes a pipe and rocks the whole professor look), I started cringing, and now my gag reflex has been engaged. I'm not even sure I know how to describe how annoying I find this book, while still managing to be swept up by it.

First of all, Mia's entire existence is show more ridiculous. Her parents are punk rockers with hearts of gold, who've grown up, but who are still awesomely - wait for it - sarcastic, and while they love that their daughter is a brilliant cellist possibly on her way to Julliard, they still both sort of wish she played the drums. Oh, and they jokingly reminisce about daddy's propensity to drink himself stupid and puke onstage when nervous (this they tell to ten-year-old Mia about to play her first recital). Oh, and her mom is sooooo cool that she wears a black leather miniskirt with a slutty red tank top after *just* having a baby! In Oregon! OOoooooooohhhhh!

The part that's just sent me over the edge is when out-of-body Mia hears her extended family discussing the man who caused the deadly accident Mia and her family has been in. They speak of how the poor man wasn't drinking and was unable to avoid the crash when Mia's dad swerved into his lane. Mia thinks of how she wishes she could go and comfort the poor man. BULLSHIT! She knows FOR SURE that he parents are dead, and still doesn't know if her little brother has survived, and she's sorry for the other dude who walked away without a scratch?!?!

Mia's already too damn angelic for this book, and while I'm still holding out hope that all this remembering is fabricated in some sort of coma dream, and Mia's family and life really isn't so saccharine sweet...but I seriously doubt it. Sigh.

*** Still reading, and ARRRGGGHHH! Didn't anyone Mia ever knew make a bad decision? Or even a mildly poor one? This utter perfection and anti-Beaver-yet-still-Cleaver sweetness is driving me nuts, yet there are still parts that get me and are making me cry. Grrrrr...

*** Okay, I finished it, and while I see why so many people gush about this book (and Adam? if you're real, call me?), I'm still frustrated by the shiny life Mia had. Of course, it'll be hard for her to choose to stay if all that magic (or, at least, a lot of that magic) is gone. I think it'd be more compelling if things weren't so beautiful and sweet and lovely all the time... show less

SPOILERS ABOUND

Mia, whose life has been charmed in nearly every way imaginable, experiences a car crash that puts her in a coma and kills her immediate family. Removed from her body in an astral form, Mia watches and listens as visitors encourage her to wake up, including her friends, family, and boyfriend, and relives several significant moments of her life via flashback before choosing whether to return.

Sounds like a no-brainer emotional home run, right? Forman gives us several portraits of grief, from the usually-stoic grandparents who crumble at the sight of their comatose granddaughter to the tough but fair nurse to the snarky best friend to the No-Tears Baby Shampoo Prescription boyfriend. Flashbacks set them up, coma girl knocks show more them down, she of course wakes up at the end, roll credits.

This premise plays out pretty well for the first half of the book, but then the second half drops and I slowly realized none of the story threads were really going to pay off. Nothing about her parents' lives had any weight on who Mia or her brother are or why losing them is tragic. Forman goes out of her way to repeatedly portray the parents as the ultimate cool parents who let Mia drink and have sex because hey they're still cool just like Nirvana and The Ramones whoa radical dude. Given the rose-colored attention paid to Mia's parents in flashbacks, I have to wonder if there wasn't a rough draft in which the parents look over a comatose Mia and ghost-high-five each other all day for being so alternative.

Mia's little brother Teddy is aptly named, as his role is to pretty much act precocious and cute to set up his poorly revealed death. It didn't help that the audiobook's narrator kept putting on a high-pitched voice that amplified Teddy's inhumanly "childish" lines. He is a stuffed animal placed in the story to look cute then turn to fluff.

Speaking of inhuman traits, Mia's boyfriend Adam is some sort of manic pixie dream boy, adoring her every trait while the only flaw in the relationship is that they're too polite at first. Later, he stages a large diversion in the Intensive Care Unit of Mia's hospital in order to spend a bit of time with her... after he already saw her? And her family is on good terms with him anyway? And some musician figures into the scheme so that Forman can namedrop MTV as a source for happening music news?

Mia as cellist should be the most interesting trait of the book, connecting the cast and time periods, but it ultimately turns into a symbol of her massively fortunate life. She loves classical music while her parents are rockers... and she adopted a competitive spirit at music camp... and was set to become a young professional at an elite academy... where's the tension here? Okay, so Adam bonds with Mia by having her "play" the bow across his body, that's cute. Then what? Her musical prowess in this book could have been replaced with collecting hats and everything would have played out the same way. "My parents are retired haverdashers who married under a giant bowler, but me, I'm a beanie girl, LOOK OUT CAR CRASH SO SAD."

Here's an idea: don't give Mia a projected presence in the hospital at all. Let the bedside visits and flashbacks happen on their own, without an invested narrator telling us how to feel at every turn. Keep the suggestion by hospital staff that Mia must ultimately decide whether to return, but don't give us Mia's commentary on everything. There's plenty enough to show without telling us what we just saw - nowhere is this truer than when Mia's grandparents are heartbroken to see her and Mia tells us something like, "Guess they're not as tough as I thought they were."

I guess you're not as interesting as I thought you were, Mia. Go enjoy your cello mastery, devoted boyfriend, loving family and friends, and the spiritual mulligan that allowed you to feel so appreciated while everyone begged you to come back. show less

Mia's family is in a horrific car crash, leaving her parents dead and her and her little brother gravely injured. In a sort of out of body experience, Mia's consciousness relates what happens to her when she's taken to the hospital in a coma with severe injuries, filling in the story of her family and friends with flashbacks.

I can see why this book was popular when it came out about five years ago. There's an intensity and page-turning quality to it as you don't know what Mia's going to decide, if she will live or die. It's also heartbreaking to read knowing that, should she choose to live, she has a lot of grief to deal with and decisions to make. It's the sort of book that left me deeply unsettled reading it, but one I won't forget show more anytime soon. show less