Book Review : If I Stay by Gayle Foreman

Title of the book : If I Stay 

Author : Gayle Foreman

Genre : Young Adult Fiction

About The Author

Gayle Forman is and Award-winning author and has written several bestselling novels for young adults, including the JUST ONE Series, I WAS HERE, WHERE SHE WENT and the #1 New York Times bestseller IF I STAY. This novel has been translated into more than 40 languages and in 2014 was adapted into a major motion picture.

Book Blurb

Mia had everything: a loving family, a gorgeous, adoring boyfriend, and a bright future full of music and full of choices. Then, in an instant, almost all of that is taken from her. Caught between life and death, between a happy past and an unknowable future, Mia spends one critical day contemplating the one decision she has left—the most important decision she’ll ever make.

Simultaneously tragic and hopeful, this is a romantic, riveting and ultimately uplifting story about memory, music, living, dying, loving.

Review

A beautiful, poignant and touching tale of a seventeen old year girl Mia. The story is told by Mia as she lies critical in an Intensive Care Unit. She is the sole survivor of a car crash where her entire family vanishes in the blink of an eye. She is critical at verge of life and death and goes through an out of body experience.

Do the people who survive actually know what had happened. Out of Body experiences are they for real? The book made me think about many such incidents I have heard or read about. Is their actually a life after death? and is their a stop between from where we can return? We can have a big discussion of Believers, Non Believers, scientists and so on. Well, personally whenever I have such instances I have believed them. If you read considering Mia is hanging somewhere trying to decide If she should stay, you will feel and cry with her.

The story shuttles between her past memories and her present. She has lost everything, her parents, her little brother, yet she still has something, her love for music and her friend, who’s just like her soul sister and her boyfriend. Her grandparents, her cousins, her aunt everyone want her back. She is convinced she does not want to come back, but their love keeps pulling her back. At one point, she does not want to make any decision. It is then she gets a support from her grandfather, who tells her he will understand whatever decision she makes.

Is the decision so easy? Will Love be able to bring her back?

The writing style is easy and the book keeps you engrossed till the end, and finishes abruptly. For me, that is a cliffhanger and the next book will be soon in my library.

My favourite quotes from the book

‘All relationships are tough. Just like with music, sometimes you have harmony and other times you have cacophony.’

“Either way you win and either way you lose. What can I tell you? Love’s a bitch.”

“I have a feeling that once you live through something like this, you become a little invincible.”

My Rating : 4.5/5

 If I Stay is a 2014 American teen romantic drama film directed by R.J.Cutler and is based on the above novel.The film was released on August 22, 2014, grossing $78.9 million worldwide.