If I Stay

[Nicole]

If you want a book whose pace is as fast as the one you’ll want to have when reading it, then this book is your soul mate on paper. If I Stay by Gayle Forman tells the story of an ordinary 17-year-old teenager named Mia Hall, who is die-hard cellist with a weakness for classical music. She lives in Portland, Oregon and is surrounded by numerous rock fans− her mom and dad who were former punk-rockers, her boyfriend Adam who is the guitarist in his rock band Shooting Star, and even her little brother Teddy who is starting to gain a love for hardcore music−which are the complete opposite of the classical, Yo-Yo Ma swooning fans like Mia. One weekday in February, with barely an inch of snow on the ground, the family heads out on a snow day to visit family friends Henry and Willow. Everything is normal as the family argues over what to play in the car, being a family of huge music fanatics with differing tastes, when out of nowhere, the car is struck head on by a car zooming at them at an incredible 60 mph. Mia wakes up to see evidence of the car wreck all around her, including her mom and dad’s distorted bodies and… her own? Mia has an out-of-body experience as she watches her severely injured body fight through a coma in order to survive. But the truth is that, in the end, Mia has to choose her fate. Will she decide to stay and rejoin her boyfriend Adam, best friend Kim, and grandparents or will she end up leaving them behind to join her parents so she can move on with them? As the book goes on and Mia contemplates what she will choose over a roughly 24-hour period with chapters divided up into varying time intervals, she reflects on the memories of her life: the choices she has had to make all along, the differences that have separated her from those around her, and the one thing that has ultimately connected her to loved ones and fueled her passion for life: music.