Gayle FormanYoung Adult · Romance·b. 1970
If I Stay
Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Mia has a gift for the cello, a loving family, and a complicated but tender relationship with her rock-musician boyfriend, Adam. On a snowy morning, a single car accident shatters everything, and Mia finds herself outside her own body in a hospital, watching doctors work to save her while her life hangs in the balance.
Suspended between staying and letting go, Mia moves through the day as an unseen observer, revisiting the memories that made her — her parents, her little brother, her music, her love for Adam — and confronting the hardest question a person can face: whether to fight to live in a world that has already been irreparably changed.
Gayle Forman's beloved YA novel is a spare, deeply felt meditation on grief, family, first love, and the choices that define a life, told across a single day that holds a whole world of feeling.
How it reads
Prose complexity 1/10
Content warnings (3)
Death Of A ParentChild DeathTrauma
- A teenager, Mia, who plays the cello, is the only survivor of a car accident that took the lives of her parents and little brother. Barely a survivor though, since she is critically injured and in a coma. Nevertheless, she is also the narrator of the story in the present tense, as her mind/spirit/soul floats in a pre-ghost state near her physical body, watching everything that happens after the accident. In a state of shock, Mia tries to cope with her situation and struggles to decide whether she should stay in life or not. At the same time, she recalls bits and pieces of her life up to the moment of the accident, turning the book into a story both of loss and bliss, providing a concise portrait of herself, her family, her friend Kim, her boyfriend Adam, her interactions with them, and everything a girl of her age hopes for and fears.<br><br>Although the premise sounds grim—and it is at times—the book doesn't become melodramatic or corny, and it carefully avoids both over-optimism and heavy pessimism. The dilemma Mia faces may seem superficial at first (who wouldn't choose life over death?), but the reader slowly understands that even if it is physically possible to survive, it isn't easy to bear the burden of being the only survivor in such a happy and caring family.<br><br>Gayle Forman does a great job of giving voice to Mia, who sounds like a genuine teenager of her background. Furthermore, she portrays —through Mia's eyes— the people around her in vivid colors, bringing them to life rather than keeping them as mere vehicles for expressing Mia's feelings.
- I love the book just as much as the movie I love how the book went into more depth with certain characters and how they included the scene with Gramps and Mia in both the book and movie where he gives her his blessing to go if she's chooses to I teared up reading it it never fails to get me I can't wait to start where she went #finishedifistayin7days😱🥰❤️