On one February morning, Mia goes out for a drive with her family and everything changes. Her parents are dead and she is in a coma. She must make a choice whether to stay in the land of the living or give up. But what is the point of being alive if there is nothing to live for?
There is a kind of book that will touch your heart, or awaken a lingering memory or a potential fear that will haunt your mind so that even long after you’ve fallen asleep, your unconscious self is still wading through the details. Your dreams will be fitful and when you finally awaken, you will find yourself tangled up in sheets with puffy, swollen eyes from tears that you shed when you weren’t even aware enough to know you were crying. If I Stay is this kind of book. If I Stay demonstrates the kind of beauty that can only exist alongside despair and shines all the more for it. It is filled with happiness and sorrow, laughter and tears, birth and death, love and loss. By writing a book filled with parallels, Forman proves that life has no opposite and thus leaves readers with an overwhelming sense of joy and hope despite tears and grief that they are bound to feel.
Fans of Gayle Forman will not be disappointed.