Review: If I Stay (#1) by Gayle Forman

This is going to be a quick little review today.  I’m still participating in the Bout of Books read a thon and I want to finish the current book that I’m reading.  I also have a lot of things to do today and tomorrow including going to a graduation party.

 On a day that started like any other...

Mia had everything: a loving family, a gorgeous, admiring 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 he 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.

Description taken from Goodreads

My Review 

Anyway!  I know I’m a little late jumping on this bandwagon.  I’ve had If I Stay by Gayle Forman on my shelf for years and I’m just now getting to it.  When I saw that the Bout of Books read a thon was starting up I knew this was my chance, I could finally read it.  And boy, did I read it.

This book, I don’t even know where to start with this book.  Ms. Forman handled every aspect of this book brilliantly and I totally commend her for it.  The drama, the romance, the feels, the laughs.  Everything about this book is total perfection.  Yup, that’s right.  I said it.  PERFECTION.  

We start off with Mia and her family going for a drive on a snow day and automatically my brain is yelling at the book.  “You don’t go for a drive on a snow day, you crazy family!”  Then BAM!  Car accident.  For the rest of the book we are with Mia, who is stuck in this in-between realm between life and death where she sees her family and friends with her real body.  We also get to see a lot of her memories and this really lets us into Mia’s life as we get to know her family and friends and her boyfriend Adam (who I absolutely adore, by the way).  

Throughout the novel, Mia is torn on whether or not to stay with the living or pass on.  The choice is ultimately up to her.  

If I Stay made me laugh, cry, smile and swoon.  If you have any hesitation reading this book, let me make up your mind for you.  READ IT!  It’s that simple.  After you read this you may look at life a bit differently.  I know I did. 

Definitely 5/5 stars.