If I Stay

In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen ­year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, this will change the way you look at life, love, and family. Now a major motion picture starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Mia's story will stay with you for a long, long time.

If I Stay is a bittersweet memory of a family and their loved ones. It's told through the eyes of Mia, who watches herself being treated in the hospital as her loved ones surround her. And she has to make the toughest choice of all...

I really love the way the story was told, while Mia is watching over her own body in the hospital she is reminded of memories of her family and friends and through that we got to know them better. It was beautiful how the story of her life unfolds. I absolutely adored her family and friends, everyone was their own character with specific traits and quirks, and what a loving family as well! That made me that much more emotionally invested in the story, they seemed so real.

For as much as this book falls into the heartbreaking and sad category it was actually rather funny at times! It made the book so much easier for me to read. I also loved how much music played a part of the story, Mia with her cello, her boyfriend Adam with his band and her father's days in a band as well. Music was a beautiful background for this story.

All in all a bittersweet and rewarding book! I'm not always one for sad books but recently I've been finding out that there are some I actually really love and this is definitely one of them!

After reading all the reviews here, I was expecting to read a beautiful, masterful, moving story. Instead, what I got was the distinct feeling that I was reading a Young Adult book geared towards the 12-16 year old female demographic. Warning: This may be the harshest review I've ever written about anything. Ever. So don't read on if you've decided you're going to feel personally offended by an opposing viewpoint.

I understand that this tale is being told through the voice of a teen girl, hence the naive and youthful tone, but I really feel it could've been done in a more lyrical, artistic way. I was expecting something along the lines of Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" -- which was literary art. It was transcendent. However, listening to Mia's "thoughts" was like nails on a chalkboard for me. Listening to a pretentious 17-year-old girl who lacks any real depth because her life has been SO charmed really grated on my nerves. I didn't care about any of the characters -- none were particularly likable because they were all so cliche'd and caricature-ish. I was irritated to the point of exhaustion by constantly hearing how awesomely fun and rad and liberal the parents were (it's like, WE GET IT ALREADY! The parents were ex-rock star hipsters! How surprising and unexpected!). And Mia's boyfriend is a handsome and famous rock star himself who -- gasp! -- surprises everyone by actually falling in love with her even though she's just a "nerdy" Juilliard-bound classical musician! Wow, what a hip dichotomy! Mia's backstory reads like a condescending junior-high romance novel, or a very bad Nickleodeon sitcom.

The whole story came off as juvenile, amateurish, one-dimensional, incredibly cheesy (especially the parts that were meant to tug at the heart strings), way too obvious, and full of tired stereotypes. I couldn't get into it but forced myself to get to the last page, because I held out hope 'til the bitter end that this story might somehow redeem itself and resolve in a beautiful or unexpected way. I was sadly mistaken.