if i stay

Usually I try to stay away from spoilers in my reviews.  Especially if I liked the book because I genuinely want you to go out and read it, but I don’t think that I can avoid the spoilers this time.  However, before you sign off (only to come back after you’ve read the book, of course) let me tell you that I thought this book was magnificent.

Mia is a 17 year old high school senior on the brink of everything.  An unexpected snow day leaves her and her family with the promise of a day full of good friends and time together.  Something happens along the way and Mia is left forced to make a decision that will literally change her life forever.

So that’s the generic synopsis.

This was a super short read for me.  I checked it out on my Nook from the library today and finished it in a little under an hour.  It was 119 pages on my Nook, but I’m not sure how that translates into printed word form, but still it was a quick and easy read.

Well, I take that back.  It wasn’t an easy read.  It was one of those books that grabs your heart and squeezes it so tight you actually feel as if you can’t breathe and you must set the book down for a second.  The story is devastating and unbelievably sad, but I couldn’t stop reading it.  I had to know.

**********Now come the smallest little spoilers I can manage.**********

I love that Mia wanted to spend time with her family.  That she wasn’t ashamed of taking her brother (who was 10 years younger) trick or treating.  I find that it’s too common in YA fiction for the main character to loathe her family in that teen angsty way.  It was refreshing to find something different.

I spent the first half of the book on the verge of tears.  The cataclysmic event starts almost immediately.  You’re left in disbelief, much like Mia is.  The writing is melodic and lyrical and I would catch myself rolling the phrases around in my head to try to commit them to memory.  I wanted to remember them.  Desperately.

Gayle Forman infuses a humanity to the story that is generally missing in YA.  In a place where things are so clinical and distant she finds a way to show you how incredibly beautiful people can be.

“The anesthesiologist absentmindedly strokes my temples through her latex gloves.”

The struggle people go through in a time of great devastation to strive for normalcy.

“…Gramp sees me and he strides across the floor to my bed.  “Hello, duck,” he says.”

If I Stay is a love story not so deftly hidden in this tragedy.  Almost as if recollecting, Mia recounts meeting her boyfriend Adam, falling in love and struggling with choosing a future with or without him.  It’s about loving the people who are there for you and finding out how they pull themselves up and fight for you, especially when you can’t do it for yourself.

“The funny thing was, I never really bought into Kim’s notion that they were somehow bound together through me – until just now when I saw her half carrying him down the hospital corridor.”

I kept on valiantly throughout the book, holding back tears and nearly choking on the lump that had formed in my throat.  Until I got here:

“I know that all the magic kisses in the world probably couldn’t have helped him today.  But I would do anything to have been able to give him one.”

I lost it.  Even typing that out just now tears are blurring the screen.

A book doesn’t have to be happy or have some socially conscience message to be a good book.  It doesn’t necessarily have to have a happy ending to be a favorite.  It just has to make you forget where you are and feel something.  Gayle Forman accomplishes that in spades.