****
If I Stay is the heart rendering story of Mia, a 17 year old
cellist who’s seemingly perfect life is turned upside down. In one life
shattering flash the world she knew is gone forever and all she can do is stand
by and watch helplessly as medics try and piece her life back together. However
ultimately Mia holds the key and she must make the choice.
We follow Mia over 24 hours seeing through her spirits eyes
feeling what she feels and willing for her to live on. The reader is thrown
into the deep end from the off with the gory details not being spared.
The book starts of wonderfully joyful and innocent; a
blanket of pure, fresh, white snow allows Mia and her family a free day.
However this turns into a day of sorrow as her mother and father are killed in
a car accident leaving her mind and soul to watch events unfold around her. Mia
is unaware of her young brother Teddy’s condition until later in the story
pragmatic hints are given to her and the reader to decipher his fate.
Mia is plunged into a bottomless coma by the accident and
desperate attempts by friends and family members are made to relieve her from
her invisible existence. The most frantic of all made by her boyfriend Adam. He,
like her is a musician and as Mia struggles to make her choice she remembers
all the things they have done together, their first date, their first kiss. She
also goes through other pinnacle moments in her life such as Teddy’s birth, her
application to Juilliard, music camp and family gatherings. Mia does this in a
way that makes the audience feel as though she is trying to hide from her
decision, yet also gather reasons to stay.
However Mia comes across small reasons not to stay. When she
was awake she was already battling to decide if she should go to Juilliard to
read music or stay to be with her boyfriend Adam. Mia and Adams relationship is
not the typical short lived whimsical teen romance but profound and meaningful,
Mia remembers how she realised this when her parents shared a knowing look as
Adam blew on her hands to warm them up. This battle reflects the one she is now
fighting and once again Adam is willing her to stay. I felt passionately for
Adam who’s attempts to wake Mia show how love conquers all and how far someone
is willing to go and how much someone is willing to sacrifice just to see the
one thing that really matters to them.
This story is an emotional roller coaster that will have you
in tears of joy, and more than often tears of sadness and despair. On more than
one occasion I found impossible to read through the floods of tears staining my
eyes. Like every human I put myself in Mia’s position and willed with all my
might to awaken her. It is so cruel that the author has the God like power to
decide her fate while the reader and the character aimlessly try and take
over.
Towards the end of the book I started to convince myself
that the worst will happen preparing myself for overwhelming grief at the loss
of a person who I had come so close to. Forman has the incredible skill of
letting the reader actually become the character by letting them enter Mia’s
mind, and unlike other stories that allow this we, as the reader and the
character, are not entirely alive which makes Mia’s ghost like existence
personal to the audience as none of the other characters know that we have the
ability to watch their every move.
Of course I am not going to divulge the ending to you but it
is wonderfully ambiguous and all most certainty tear jerking.
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