If I Stay by Gayle Forman

On a day that started like any other...
Mia had everything: a loving family, a gorgeous, adoring boyfriend, and a bright future full of music and full of choices. Then, in an instant, almost all of that is taken from her. Caught between life and death, between a happy past and an unknowable future, Mia spends one critical day contemplating the only decision she has left--the most important decision she'll ever make.
Simultaneously tragic and hopeful, this is a romantic, riveting, and ultimately uplifting story about memory, music, living, dying, loving.
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I'd passed on this book many times, mostly due to the fact that I've read some pretty harsh reviews from other teens. But when this was reprinted with the new cover, I had to get it. Yeah, yeah, I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but who doesn't? Anyways, OH MY GOD. How I let this book go under the radar so long, I have no clue. Mia, sensitive and shy, in love with her amazing boyfriend, and content with her family and life in general, faces some serious, heartbreaking decisions must be made when she is in a car wreck, and both her mother and father are dead. Her little brother is in critical condition, and she's stuck outside of her body. It seems the choice is obvious and her decision is already made when she is flown to a hospital, but things change as her friends and other family members show up. I love the beautiful prose Forman uses, and the writing couldn't have been more realistic. The best part of the novel for me was her boyfriend, Adam. The parts I cried hardest at had to be the parts when Adam was showing how much he really did love her. A great read, although it was sad.


5 stars from me. Recommendation to anyone looking for a love story that's just as heartbreaking as it is romantic.