If I Stay has a premise that drew me in: 17-year-old Mia is in a coma following a serious car accident with her family, and the book follows her out-of-body experience, of sorts, as she is faced with the decision of whether she should stay alive or allow herself to die. That summary sounds rather simplistic, but the book’s beauty is in the questions it raises about what it means to live, as well as the importance of the moments that we create with each other. Inevitably, I found myself wondering what I would do in Mia’s place; while I’m still not sure, I think it’s interesting to ask those questions.
A few pages in, I was worried this would be one of those religious/spiritual/paranormal stories, which I really didn’t want to read, so I was relieved when it turned out not to be. That is, I thought the book was going to focus heavily on the afterlife, but it really doesn’t, so I was glad (since I thought it could–and probably would–descend into cheesy territory fairly quickly).
It’s very interesting to me that so many people on Goodreads have given this book a five-star, “WOW” rating. I enjoyed the book, but I don’t feel attached to it or its characters the way I sometimes do with books that I really love. I think the author, Forman, did a good job of writing Mia’s narrative inner dialogue, but there were a couple things about the book that really distracted me. The first several pages feel kind of messy: just from a grammar/diction standpoint, I noticed right away that the author uses a lot of alliteration and I actually found it distracting. I don’t know, it just felt really wordy to me and I didn’t like it. Also, as far as characters, I couldn’t identify or connect with any of them in particular. I liked Mia the most, but the other characters are flat and stereotypical. I thought it was really unrealistic that Mia’s parents are sooooo progressive and super-cool. Yeah, they were punk when they were younger, but they struck me more as Mia’s buddies rather than parental figures, which is never a good thing.
All that aside–I’m not bashing the book as a whole. There were specific things that bothered me, but as I said, I enjoyed the story itself. It’s easy to read and really short–I read it in a few hours–but I won’t be giving this one a five-star review. I gave it a 3 (though I really wish I could give it a 3.5, but Goodreads doesn’t allow half-stars, so anyway). I saw that there’s a forthcoming sequel, which I might read, but I’m not in a rush to do so.
