If I Stay – Gayle Forman

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is incredibly challenging to figure out how you feel about it. While I get the depth of emotion put into it and the important questions it calls the main character to face, overall it is not uplifting or something that I would enthusiastically recommend to any readers. It is an important book to face death and the loss of loved ones, but the approach ultimately makes me worry if it would be triggering to some readers more than cathartic and healing.

The main character, Mia, goes on a drive with her family and suddenly her entire world is shattered. After a brutal accident, Mia is left in a coma with severe injuries and must reflect upon her life to decide if she wants to continue living in the aftermath of the crash or leave this world. She jumps through her memories and experiences with the people in her life in no particular order. Some of the scenes just trip up the pacing and seem like they should have been edited out of the story, but others are important scenes in her journey.

While I was never completely bored by the narrative, I was also never entirely invested and the depressing tone of the story didn’t allow me to engage with it. As a result, I finished the book with a relatively apathetic feeling towards it and I don’t expect that I will be recommending it to readers unless I truly feel that it will help them come to terms with aspects of their lives in ways that I did not need in a book.

View all my reviews