The day begins like any other for Mia. She has breakfast with her family, would be that the school fails due to heavy snowfall and decides to make a family trip with her parents and her brother. All four get into the car. Not far from her parents' home then the unthinkable happened: Another vehicle is traveling at full force in her inside. After a brief moment of shock Mia gets out, looking her family and find them quickly. Her parents are seriously injured and motionless on the ground. Mia will immediately recognize that they are dead. Looking for her brother, she sees her own body and realized that they too badly injured and unconscious. Your mind has a reason to leave the body for some and they watched from now on everything (ie their bodies) happening around them. She sees the relatives who visit them in the hospital, her friend Kim and her boyfriend Adam, who are desperately trying to get into her room. Mia it quickly becomes clear that it is faced with the most difficult decision of her life, that between life and death ...
Opinion
"If I Stay" is actually written incredibly soulful. Already at the beginning of the action, shortly after the car accident, one that is aware. The accuracy with which Gayle Forman describes the bodies of Mia's parents and the impressions of Mia is representing a hand barely tolerable, on the other hand very suitable. One can at any second in Mia put into it, understands their pain although of course no one can imagine how horrible it is to lose his entire family in one fell swoop. Mia You feel so close, considered together with it if it still has a sense to live on and can pass their lives Revue.
These recaps, where Mia tells of her most beautiful but also of their most difficult moments in life are wonderfully succeeded. This you and all the people you feel around them even closer. Especially the music that is a key metric in Mia's life, has charmed me. Mia is one of the best cellists of the country and probably goes to New York, there to attend a prestigious music college. But because they have a problem with her boyfriend Adam, who plays in a band and therefore not entirely unknown even always traveling across the country. The two will be clear that they do not have much time together, but that the time in reality as fast runs, they both have no idea. The built-in by the author music pieces that have played a major role in the course of the relationship between Mia and Adam, I found beautiful. Gayle Forman has even managed to raise it a little interest in classical music, I have just listened to some of the mentioned in the Book of songs on YouTube.
"If I Stay" is to create a story from the first-person perspective, which was used here perfectly. Not once did me the sobriety, the events portrays with Mia in the hospital, surprised. They can be found more quickly with their lot off than their fellows, all hope that at least they survived this terrible accident.
I especially enjoyed me here that you as readers do not really know how it turns out, I would have expected from this book that the end is predictable and was pleasantly surprised by the contrary.
All in all, "If I Stay" incredibly emotional, heartbreaking and sad but also hopeful and cheerful. It is a reader through nearly every emotion. It also leaves a - going even more quickly - by the unfortunately only about 240 pages. I wonder still what I would have done at Mias Imagined and if I ever want to stand in front of such a decision.
Conclusion
Painfully beautiful and very poignant - a must-read!
