Book: If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Genre: young adult fiction
This is one of those books wherein I first watched the movie version before reading the book. Don’t get me wrong, I always aim to read first then watch the movie, if there is any, but the movie version of this is what hooked me in. I saw that Chloe Grace Moretz will play the protagonist and yes, that is the reason I watched the movie. After watching and finding out that it was actually a book, I decided to give it a spin, the same way I did with the Twilight series.
This book will introduce us to Mia, a seventeen years old girl from Oregon who loves to play the cello. The story starts on a snowy morning when Mia, together with her parents and his younger brother Teddy, decided to take a drive after finding out that school has been cancelled. They were looking forward to bonding with people that they love without knowing that the end is just in front of them. This book will affirm how our life can change in a blink of an eye, making us appreciate all that we have, look back at all the things that we lost, and make us wonder about the things that could have been.
I have to admit that this book reminded me of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold clearly because of the style of writing. I like this style because this makes the reader feel a deeper connection with the protagonist. Only for me The Lovely Bones is sadder than If I Stay. Ok, enough comparison. Let us go back to this one.
What I enjoyed most about this book is that I got to get to see Mia’s relationship with the other characters especially with Kim, her best friend and Teddy, her younger brother. There are a lot of nice scenes in the book that shows how Mia’s bond with the other characters grew. I hope that we got to see this on the big screen but sadly the movie seems to focus only on Mia and Adam’s side of the story, which I like at first, but after reading the book, I wish there is more focus on the other relationships as well.
Another part that I like is the music. It is an integral part of the storyline given the fact that Mia plays the cello and her Dad is a former drummer, and music is what connected her to Adam in the first place. Part of the reason why I like the story (film and book) is the music, but like Mia’s mom, I am not an instrument player whatsoever, but I am a listener, an avid listener. Most of the things I really remember from the film are the music and the thing that sort of concerns me before reading this book is, yes, the music. Good thing Gayle got me covered. The particular copy that I bought has this Beyond the Music section. Which helped me track down the songs mentioned in the book, at least most of them. Here is a link for the book.
Overall, for me this book is worth the read specially if you like stories that pull on the heart strings. I wouldn’t suggest this to people with depression or anyone who loss someone close recently. I personally, found it kind of heavy to read when I got it last February 2017; I was still recovering from my Mom’s death back then. I only decided to try reading it last October.
Well, that is all folks! I apologise if I rambled too much on this blog. This looks more like a rant rather than a review. But I’ll fix things up on my next one.
Thank you for reading.
Talk to you next Sunday!
P.S. If you want to listen to the music, here is the link for the playlist created by Gayle Forman.
Quotes from the book:
If I Stay, quote
If I Stay, quote.
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