If You Had Stayed

by Jessica Madden

Emily has a secret. But telling her best friend Josh about how she feels about him isn't easy. The last thing she wants is to ruin their friendship. Though, ruining their friendship is the least of her concern. With Josh battling schizophrenia, she is constantly dragged into his world, helping him to deal with his hallucinations and delusions. It doesn't help when bullies make fun of him. Between his illness and bullies, Josh uses music to escape, and Emily tries to encourage him to go beyond his fears with the help of their friend Haylie.

Everything soon changes when a camping trip between the two friends goes wrong. Josh is dead and Emily's world is turned upside down. She is left to wonder what went wrong during the trip and what had made Josh jump. Was it her fault? Could she had stopped him? How can she cope with him gone? It doesn't help when the school bully Gabby constantly makes her feel bad, and there's Gabby's boyfriend who is suddenly acting all nice to her. Is he being nice or is he up to something? Emily doesn't know.

But when Emily's own mental health starts to take a turn on her, she doesn't know what to do or who to turn to. All she wants is Josh. What does it mean when she starts hallucinating him? Can she get the help she needs to cope with her best friend's death?

234 pages, Paperback

Published July 6, 2022

About the author

Jessica Madden was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. She began writing stories since the age of eight. When she was nine, she realised that she wanted to be a writer more than anything in the world. At twenty-three years old, Jessica published her first book Right Here Waiting for You. Writing about characters falling in love has always been her favourite thing to write about.

When she is not writing, Jessica is often daydreaming up new storylines, and can be found lost in reading a good book.

You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @JessicaCMadden

Reviews

[Heather Kirchhoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recommend If You Had Stayed by Jessica Madden. It talks about schizophrenia, which I really appreciated. I've never read a book dealing with that subject. I really enjoyed Emily and Josh's friendship and hoped they would become something more. Emily's struggle to accept what happened tugged at my heart and the ending left me satisfied. A really good story overall.

*I did receive an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Leonie · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a few problems I had with this book there was a few mistakes and sometimes the story couldn’t flow to the expectations I wanted so I couldn’t give this one a higher rating I think the message was good but the grammar just wasn’t for me with this one so I sadly have to put this as a dnf Madden tried to make this book great but it wasn’t her strongest for me in my personal opinion