Great approaches, but not all the characters were able to convince me ...

What's the matter?

Mia faces a serious decision. She is a prominent cello player and has the opportunity to go to the Juilliard School of Music in New York, but she really wants to leave her family and especially her boyfriend Adam behind him? However, before you can decide, something unexpected happens: your family dies in a car accident and falls into a coma. And now you really have to decide. Stay or go?

Writing style

I've read If I Stay in English and can you recommend it to emulate, even if you do not yet have so much exercise. Gayle Forman writes simple and beautiful. It is not necessarily my favorite author, but I had my moments where me her writing style has imprisoned. In particular, the sobriety, in which the narrator describes the events, fits incredibly well the history. I think Gayle Forman is one of the writers who really can adapt well to their style of writing. But I'll find out for sure if I will soon read Just One Day by it.

My Opinion

I'm a bit ambivalent when it comes to the book. The theme is usually not necessarily mine, because I just do not like to read books about death, but since Gayle Forman is so highly praised, I wanted her book definitely give a chance to inspire me.

There are two types of books: the action-based and character-based. If I Stay is based on his characters, the plot, which is actually taking place is rather weak. Therefore, my review will mainly relate to the characters.

In If I Stay I found the characters as neither strong nor weak. The protagonist Mia has anything that might covet the heart: a great family, playing a mad talent for Cello, rosy future prospects and a friend who is a band member on the way up. And yet, she feels like she does not include, as if they had swapped the baby and she can not understand how rocker Adam could fall in love just in it.
Their biggest problem emerged only on when her family is suddenly dead, but that they shall be not really apart. First, the reader writes to the state of shock, later it seems as if they could feel no real emotions in her coma. But that was missing to make the whole thing more real. I did not always listen when Adam because now finally comes to visit me in the hospital, I wanted to know how to deal with the loss. (When writing is me just clear that repression is perhaps also a kind of addressing.)

The book had a lot of flashbacks, which should bring the reader closer to the other characters. That was a wonderful idea and stylistically very well done, but also has the strong tension removed. Better it might have been if the flashbacks have taken towards the end.
Especially Mias family, both her parents, her brother Teddy and her grandparents have taken a large part in this. The reader learns more about the musical talent in the family and the fact that they are really happy as a family. Especially Mias father could convince myself as a character very much to her mother, I can now - a few days after reading - already hardly remember.

Even her friend Kim and her boyfriend Adam dive in the flashbacks to often. We learn how Adam and Mia met to dive first in her kiss and the first intimate acquaintance, but the spell that should weigh on such a romantic relationship, is missing. On the contrary, the narrator even admits that Mia and Adam had actually separated again in the first month because of her contradictions, if there had been an anchor not Mia's family.
After the first two flashbacks with Adam makes his character through a transformation that I did not like. From side to side, he was unsympathetic to me. He indulges Mia's success is not necessarily, but is offended that she would leave him if she was going to Juilliard. He is with his band at the time of the accident already so famous that it is not often there. Why should he succeed, but not Mia?

So it happened that the end for me is not been traceable. I had assumed that Mia had already made their decision and as Adams love for him occurred to me rather weak to her and her love, seems to me not to be the solution. Personally, I believe that it has been the music at the end that makes so a really big part in the book.

This has given me the way, also liked very much. You can learn something about classical music, there's even a playlist that you can find it here, what I have not yet noticed while reading. There is a lot depending on the music, she plays at key points (such as in the accident or in the career) play an important role, so that thereby my theory would be supported for the end again.

Now that I've talked so much about the characters and actually still not all told what my closest friends, I would also like to get rid of a few words to action. As already mentioned earlier, not this book is based on the action. The plot takes about one day to complete, from the morning of the accident up to their decision (which of course I will not tell you). In that time she turns around as "spirit" in the hospital, sees how the doctors and nurses to take care of their bodies and how they will be repeatedly visited by family and friends. The little that happens, would really exciting (after all, everyone wants to know how she chooses), but the flashbacks take so much of the stress out again that the book has decreased greatly after the first half for me. Especially toward the end some flashbacks seemed to me senseless and I would have wished that their decision would have happened earlier in the act and it would not have ended so abruptly.

Conclusion

So it happened that could not convince me If I Stay, although I was impressed by Gayle Forman approaches and their character work particularly as someone who himself writes, can only admire. I can recommend it to you in any case, if you like books Fate is a lousy traitor, a whole half a year or axis of my world mochtet, although in my opinion, with this can not quite keep up. Whether I'm going to read the second part, I do not know.