If I Stay

Starred review from March 2, 2009
The last normal moment that Mia, a talented cellist, can remember is being in the car with her family. Then she is standing outside her body beside their mangled Buick and her parents’ corpses, watching herself and her little brother being tended by paramedics. As she ponders her state (“Am I dead?
I actually have to ask myself this”), Mia is whisked away to a hospital, where, her body in a coma, she reflects on the past and tries to decide whether to fight to live. Via Mia’s thoughts and flashbacks, Forman (Sisters in Sanity
) expertly explores the teenager’s life, her passion for classical music and her strong relationships with her family, friends and boyfriend, Adam. Mia’s singular perspective (which will recall Alice Sebold’s adult novel, The Lovely Bones
) also allows for powerful portraits of her friends and family as they cope: “Please don’t die. If you die, there’s going to be one of those cheesy Princess Diana memorials at school,” prays Mia’s friend Kim. “I know you’d hate that kind of thing.” Intensely moving, the novel will force readers to take stock of their lives and the people and things that make them worth living. Ages 14–up.

Fans of Alice Sebold's LOVELY BONES and Gabrielle Zevin's ELSEWHERE will be captivated by Gayle Forman's latest novel. Mia, a high school senior, is "gravely injured" in an automobile accident that took her parents and younger brother Teddy. Kirsten Potter infuses Mia's voice with all the emotion, fear, and confusion of a soul hovering between "here" and "there," painfully aware of what she has lost and what she stands to lose as she wrestles to decide: stay or go? As this twenty-four-hour drama unfolds, we become intimately acquainted with Mia and the circle of family, friends, and medical personnel fighting to keep her here, unsure until the very end how she will decide. Powerful. Emotional. Insightful. N.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine