If I Stay is a Young Adult novel by Gayle Forman, the first in the If I Stay duology. This book covers just over twenty-four hours of Mia Hall, a seventeen-year-old cellist’s afterlife. Mia is stuck in a limbo state after her world is thrown off kilter due to a tragic car accident. The world exists as it always has, but she is stuck watching as her body is treated at the hospital and her family and friends gather in the hope that she will wake from her comatose state. But her life will never be the same as it was; everything has been taken from her, and all she is left with is a possible choice. Whether it is hers or not to make, she still has to decide if she should stay or go.
One of my favourite parts of If I Stay is how strong Mia is. Every time I was pulled back into this book, it was because Mia had such a deep thought or realisation that had me a little choked up at remembering just how old she was. In particular, there is a point where she realises that it is not just she and her family that have borne the brunt of this tragedy but also the other driver, who will be affected to no end mentally. There are other points throughout that she picks up on the staff’s roles at the hospital around her in a similar light, and it was these little thoughts and deep realisations made me love how mature she was and hate that she had to be.
Another aspect I loved was how slowly, throughout the book, you see how Mia changes—how the longer she has to tackle this one choice and the more interactions she has with her loved ones, the more her energy seems to fade. To a point where she has almost made up her mind, but she is still just waiting for her one love to come to her—Adam. It is clear that Adam loved Mia from the moment he first saw her and loved her more every day since she was a lot slower on the uptake, but it was evident to those around her. So, in a sense, it made sense that he was the one person she needed to hear from the most. Even though the tears started at least forty pages before Adam’s talk with Mia, it was him that wrecked me. I could barely see through the tears to finish the book, but their love transcends their age, and I think it always will. They met their person young, but in a way, it is good that they did, because if they had not, maybe the choice Mia was tackling would have been far too easy to make.
Gayle Forman creates a seamless link between the present Mia finds herself stuck in and whatever memory or thought has her drifting and seeing that experience she had in a new light, and I have to commend the author for that. I loved seeing all these parts of Mia’s loved ones through her eyes, getting to experience how not only she felt in that moment it was happening but how these people created a beautiful web of love throughout Mia’s life. Although you never get to experience their point of view, you can see how they impacted Mia and how those experiences moulded her, and it was beautifully done. Also, there is a section at the end of the book called ‘The Story Behind The Story’. I love it when an author gives you a snippet of what their inspiration was for their novel, and Gayle Forman’s inspiration is as beautifully heartbreaking as the novel itself. So I will leave that for you to find, but I will leave you with a line from that section that had me welling up yet again: “That’s how we manage to survive loss. Because love never dies; it never goes away; it never fades. As long as you hang onto it.”.
I found this book a little difficult to get into. I am not sure if it is because I have not read a young adult book in a while, so I was having to remind myself that I was not the intended audience, but I just felt as though I was only being pulled into the book by one or two lines every few pages. I found Mia a little annoying due to her abundance of insecurities. I can understand that at that age you question everything, but she was never made to feel the way she felt; it was all of her own making and from isolating herself. Through the progression of this book, you see her almost overcome these feelings as she looks back, but they were too often repeated. Mia has always felt like a ‘foundling’ because she does not look like her family and her music taste is different from that of her parents. She never felt as though she entirely fitted in at school either because she acted more mature and people saw her more as an adult than a fellow student. However, her family supported her completely, so much so that it was beautiful to read, and she had a brilliant best friend who nurtured her love for music, as did her boyfriend. Adam was an insecurity of its own because, to Mia, it was mindboggling that someone so ‘cool’ could be interested in someone as ‘different’ as she was. Two other scenes ripped me out of the book entirely: the first was the first time that Mia and Adam were alone in her room together; to me, that was just a bizarre moment, and the other was when Mia was playing with Peter at music camp and he said ‘shitey’ which was slightly jarring to me. Therefore, I was not entirely hooked until page 160, and then my feelings were entirely invested in every single word written to the point that I was just consistently crying until the very last word.
If I Stay has been sitting on my bookcase since I bought it back in 2014. Thanks to the #EightBookBash challenge on Instagram, I decided to finally read it before the end of the year. It was the lovely Jessie (@punkybookbabe) that gave me the push to start the challenge with this book. Although I was a sobbing mess at the beautifully destructive writing of Gayle Forman, it just took far too long for me to be hooked by the book, and due to the aforementioned dislikes, I had with If I Stay, I will be rating this book Three out of Five Stars.
Firstly, I would recommend this book to those who just enjoy crying at a book that has you desperately wanting to know how it will all end. But I would really recommend If I Stay to those that feel a lot like Mia did—lost, left out, and isolated—those that feel the heartbreak of a world full of cruel tragedies, those that sadly know the well of grief that comes with an irrevocable change—this book is full of grief, but it also highlights how much love there is to be found and how tightly you should hold on to the love you have because you never know what will happen between now and tomorrow.
Favourite Quotes
““You don’t. You just work through it. You just hang in there.””
page 22
“If I stay. If I live. It’s up to me.”
page 77
“But whatever and whoever he was early this morning, he isn’t that person any longer. His life has changed irrevocably, too.”
page 106
““I just think that funerals are a lot like death itself. You can have your wishes, your plans, but at the end of the day, it’s out of your control.””
page 152
“I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.”
page 155
“I’m feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill.”
page 209
Finer Details:
Title: If I Stay
Author: Gayle Forman
Pages: 210
Publisher: Definitions
Publication: 2014 (This edition)
Language: English
Rating: 3/5