Monday 5 January 2015

Review | If I Stay by Gayle Forman


by Gayle Forman

My Rating: 

In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen-year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make.

I've mentioned before on my blog that I don't tend to read an awful lot of contemporary, and I read even less YA contemporary, for no other reason than that some of my favourite genres are historical fiction, magical realism and fantasy, so contemporary tends to pass me by!

Reading If I Stay reminded me that I should try to read contemporary more, because I usually end up enjoying what I read; I read If I Stay in a day last November and enjoyed it a lot more than I initially thought I would!

Mia's narrative was very easy to fall into, so much so that even though this book is relatively short as far as novels go I felt like I knew her very well by the time I turned the last page. I loved the constant seesawing throughout; one moment we were seeing this kind of limbo that Mia finds herself in, and the next we were being told about one of her memories regarding her family, her friends and Adam, her boyfriend.

I'm not always keen on the love interests in contemporary YA, but Adam I liked for the simple reason that Mia and Adam's relationship felt like one of the more realistic relationships I've come across in contemporary YA in a while. They had disagreements and they worked through them like a real couple do, and I appreciated Forman's honesty in that respect.

I loved Mia's parents the most. They made me laugh more than once, and knowing that neither of them survived the crash really tugged at my heartstrings.

All in all I really liked this book. I loved the way that it ended, and the only reason it got 4 stars rather than 5 is because it didn't completely blow me away. But I still recommend checking it out if it's on your TBR!

4 comments:

  1. This book gave me so many feels! I can't imagine what Mia goes through but it definitely tugged at me. I'm really thankful that I have wonderful parents like Mia's! Great review :)

    Eileen @ BookCatPin

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  2. YES to Mia's family. My goodness, I adored them. I mean, I liked Mia, but her family blew me away, and left me sobbing. Have you seen the movie? I didn't care for Adam in the movie, but her parents and brother... oh, I couldn't. They were perfect. Great review, I agree with you on a lot of these points, especially the honesty in the relationship!

    Shannon @ It Starts At Midnight

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    1. I haven't seen the movie yet; I didn't want to see it when it came out because I hadn't read the book, but I'd definitely like to see it now! =) Thanks for stopping by!

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