Review for If I Stay by Gayle Forman

***Contains Spoilers***

This book did contain some laugnaue but I think it is a book that everyone needs to read. It makes you realized, you don't have until your eighty-something to live, this could be your last breath.

If I Stay is a book that makes me want to run out and hug everyone I love.

Mia is having an ordinary day. School was cancelled because of snow, so the family decides to get out for some fun adventures on the snowy day. While they are driving they get hit by another vehicle. Mia stands up, once the part of the car she is in stops spinning and twisting around trees, and she looks down to see that there isn’t a scratch on her. She makes her way to where the other part of the car is and finds her mom and dad dead. She then rushes off to try and find her little brother but instead finds herself. She is a ghost, or a spirit, able to see everything that is going on around her but can’t make others know that she is there. Will Mia make the choice to go back to her body to live? Or will she decide to go be with the rest of her family who has past on?

I LOVED this book. Last night I rated it a 4 but I changed it today to a 5 because it really did make me think and made me want to hug everyone I know. It was a short read but the characters were great. I really loved the parents, they made the book light and funny. We got to watch as person after person came to the hospital to be there for Mia. Friends, family, boyfriend, friends of friends. It was great. Then Mia would have a flashback about that person and we would get to see how much she was really loved.

I teared up twice in this book, which doesn’t happen that much. First when she found her parents dead. Mia has a relationship with her parents like I have with mine. I couldn’t imagine finding my parents in that state. It was tough to read. The second time was when her boyfriend, Adam, sat at her bedside and begged her not to go. We have watched through the book how they fell in love and the struggle that they are facing with their lives taking them to two different parts of the country and trying to figure out a way to make it work. My favorite line in the book was from Adam.

            “If you stay, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I’ll do that, too…I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay.”

But the question remains, will she stay?