If I Stay (If I Stay, #1) in Pop Sugar's Annual Ultimate Reading Challenge

Oct 04, 2014 Sarah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'd seen this book mentioned a few times, on Tumblr, on Facebook, on Goodreads but I always forgot about it. Then I saw the movie advertised and I knew I wanted to read it before I saw the movie, like I do with all books.

If I Stay is about Mia, a musically gifted teenager, who after a car wreck involving her family she is left having an out-of-body experience as she watches her loved ones surround her and she has to make a decision, does she stay or does she go? The story is reflective, Mia talk I'd seen this book mentioned a few times, on Tumblr, on Facebook, on Goodreads but I always forgot about it. Then I saw the movie advertised and I knew I wanted to read it before I saw the movie, like I do with all books.

If I Stay is about Mia, a musically gifted teenager, who after a car wreck involving her family she is left having an out-of-body experience as she watches her loved ones surround her and she has to make a decision, does she stay or does she go? The story is reflective, Mia talks about in the present about what happened the day of the crash, she describes her parents and her brother Teddy, this is reflected by the time stamp before the paragraph begins, and she talks about the past, her relationship with her boyfriend Adam, her best friend Kim (who she resented to begin with) and her audition for the prestigious Julliard.

When Mia "awakens" after the crash, she talks about how "The car is eviscerated...[but] Beethoven's Cello Sonata no. 3 [was] still playing". Forman describes the state of the eviscerated car, saying in Mia's voice, "It isn't even a car anymore. It's a metal skeleton, without seats, without passengers." Your heart breaks for Mia as she finds her father with "pieces of [her] father's brain [are] on the asphalt". It's something no child should ever see, their parents dead. Both of them, because she finds her mother next. Which gets your heart racing, both her parents are dead, so WHERE IS TEDDY? Mia immediately sets about looking for him, however it isn't Teddy she finds, it's herself, and so she asks herself, "Am I dead?"

Mia is someone who excels at music, she has an amazing best friend, an awesome musician and genuine guy as her boyfriend. What more could you ask for? At times it gets cliché, but you read on in the hopes of finding out what happened to Teddy? Will she ever come out her coma? Will she live or will she die?

The story will break your heart and make you laugh. She shares her beautiful memories with us, as she makes one of the hardest decisions of her life, should she stay? "I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard." ...more

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