Review - If I Stay

If I Stay (If I Stay #1)
by Gayle Forman
Date: 2009
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 201
Format: hardcover
Source: Indigo

Just listen, Adam says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel.

I open my eyes wide now.
I sit up as much as I can.
And I listen.


Stay, he says.

Choices. Seventeen-year-old Mia is faced with some tough ones: Stay true to her first love—music—even if it means losing her boyfriend and leaving her family and friends behind?

Then one February morning Mia goes for a drive with her family, and in an instant, everything changes. Suddenly, all the choices are gone, except one. And it's the only one that matters.

If I Stay is a heartachingly beautiful book about the power of love, the true meaning of family, and the choices we all make.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This book has been in my TBR pile for what seems like ages. It's not very long, so I thought it would be a quick, enjoyable read. Well, it was fairly quick. But I didn't enjoy it.

Mia is the only survivor of a car accident that kills the rest of her family. In a disembodied state, she putters around the hospital, alternately telling us the story of what's going on right now, and flashing back to moments in her life. Eventually, she realizes that she has a decision to make: should she let herself die and be with her family, or should she stay?

I have no problem with the basic premise of the story. I just don't think it was executed very well here. Mia's near-death experience is very atheistic and, as a result, rather boring. She can't walk through walls, visit Hawaii, or even talk to her dead family. She basically hangs around the hospital, spending a lot of time near her body. I have no idea why the author chose for Mia to have an out-of-body experience, since the same thing could have been accomplished by having Mia trapped in her body, unable to speak, but able to share her memories with the reader. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Mia's near-death experience was boring.

Then again, Mia herself is boring. As a character, I never really got a good feel for who she was. Everyone else in her life -- especially those who weren't that close to her -- had more character development. When the main character's parents' friends are more memorable than the main character herself... that's a problem. Another issue I had was that in these flashbacks, the children all spoke like adults. Not every child and teenager is that precocious, insightful, and overflowing with so much wisdom. It made the story difficult to follow, because I was never quite sure how old the characters were supposed to be, or how many years ago this flashback was.

I also never expected the accident to be so graphic. I'm not usually bothered by descriptions of gore in books, but this one almost had me vomiting. It seemed a bit gratuitous to me. We know the family is dead; we don't need such graphic descriptions of what's smeared all over the road. I almost put the book down at that point. Show, don't tell... yes. But you don't need to show everything.

And then there was the portrayal of the hospital. I find it difficult to believe that Oregon has such hospitals of horrors, and I'm wondering if some of those things weren't just thrown in for effect. Do the operating rooms really have blood stains on the floors? Do the nurses really have more ego than compassion? Are the doctors so detached from the feelings of their patients that they'll wheel a person down the hall with their genitals exposed? If all that is true, remind me never to visit Oregon; I'd never want to end up in a hospital there.

The writing was okay, but I was not impressed by the typos. After finding two in the first ten or so pages, I wondered if the book had even been edited. Obviously, making a good first impression wasn't a priority.

All in all, I was just disappointed. I thought the premise of this book sounded awesome, but I just couldn't get into it. I felt like I was rushing through all those flashbacks just to find something interesting... but Mia's out-of-body experience turned out to be even more dull. Skip this one... unless you need a soporific.

Plot: 3/5
Characters: 2/5
Pace: 2/5
Writing: 3/5
Originality: 2/5

Overall: 2.4 out of 5

What are you reading on Mondays? (2)

This event, hosted at J. Kaye's Book Blog, is designed to list the books you finished last week, the books you are currently reading, and the books you want to finish this coming week.

Finished this past week:


Crazy Beautiful
by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
My review is here.

Currently reading:


The Dust of 100 Dogs
by A. S. King


Memories of the Afterlife
edited by Michael Newton

To be read (or at least started) this week:


If I Stay
by Gayle Forman

In My Mailbox (6)

I went to the bookstore yesterday. Indigo was having an in-store 4-for-3 promotion on all their teen books, and I needed to buy something to activate my new debit card (any excuse to buy books, right?), so I went and picked up a few things. I didn't realize until I had them all in my arms that they were all blue (and two of them had a cold theme). And then the girl who rang up my books was blue from head to toe with body paint (a lot of the staff members were dressed up for Halloween). Is that weird enough for you?



Note: all product descriptions are from Amazon.com

Dreaming Anastasia
by Joy Preble

What really happened to Anastasia Romanov?

Anastasia Romanov thought she would never feel more alone than when the gunfire started and her family began to fall around her. Surely the bullets would come for her next. But they didn't. Instead, two gnarled old hands reached for her. When she wakes up she discovers that she is in the ancient hut of the witch Baba Yaga, and that some things are worse than being dead.

In modern-day Chicago, Anne doesn't know much about Russian history. She is more concerned about getting into a good college—until the dreams start. She is somewhere else. She is someone else. And she is sharing a small room with a very old woman. The vivid dreams startle her, but not until a handsome stranger offers to explain them does she realize her life is going to change forever. She is the only one who can save Anastasia. But, Anastasia is having her own dreams…

Ice
by Sarah Beth Durst

When Cassie was a little girl, her grandmother told her a fairy tale about her mother, who made a deal with the Polar Bear King and was swept away to the ends of the earth. Now that Cassie is older, she knows the story was a nice way of saying her mother had died. Cassie lives with her father at an Arctic research station, is determined to become a scientist, and has no time for make-believe.

Then, on her eighteenth birthday, Cassie comes face-to-face with a polar bear who speaks to her. He tells her that her mother is alive, imprisoned at the ends of the earth. And he can bring her back -- if Cassie will agree to be his bride.

That is the beginning of Cassie's own real-life fairy tale, one that sends her on an unbelievable journey across the brutal Arctic, through the Canadian boreal forest, and on the back of the North Wind to the land east of the sun and west of the moon. Before it is over, the world she knows will be swept away, and everything she holds dear will be taken from her -- until she discovers the true meaning of love and family in the magical realm of Ice.

If I Stay
by Gayle Forman

In a single moment, everything changes. Seventeen-year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall riding along the snow-wet Oregon road with her family. Then, in a blink, she finds herself watching as her own damaged body is taken from the wreck...
A sophisticated, layered, and heart-achingly beautiful story about the power of family and friends, the choices we all make—and the ultimate choice Mia commands.
Shiver
by Maggie Stiefvater

For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf--her wolf--is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again.

Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human--or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.
The Book of Lost Things
by John Connolly

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own -- populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things.

That last one wasn't in the teen section. It was in the 80%-off section. And it's on my IWTRT (I Want To Read That) list, too.

But I still have Savvy, The Fairy's Return, The Looking Glass Wars, Dreamhunter, The Dust of 100 Dogs, and Memories of the Afterlife to get through as well. So I may not start any of these new ones right away. Darn it, Indigo! Why do you always have to have such good deals to tempt me?

Oh, and if you live in Canada, I think the 4-for-3 promotion on teen books ends today (Sunday). So if you want some teen books, you'd better get off the Internet and go now!

What was in your "mailbox" this week?



In My Mailbox was started by Kristi of The Story Siren.