If I Stay
Gayle Forman, 2009
Young adult Contemporary fictionRomance
A seventeen-year-old cellist's ordinary snow day ends in a crash, leaving her to decide whether to fight back to a life she isn't sure she wants. The story moves in a hush of grief and tenderness, with a cellist’s voice and flashes of ordinary family love.
Feels like grief, tenderness and hope. About family, love and freedom.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you are drawn to quiet contemporary YA about family, music and love under sudden loss. Be aware that the crash is described in graphic detail and the grief stays heavy throughout.
Why read it
It offers a tender, clear-eyed look at how one ordinary day can split a life open, and at the people who make staying feel worth weighing.
A page from the book
How fast an ordinary morning can become a road full of metal.
The car is eviscerated. The impact of a four-ton pickup truck going sixty miles an hour plowing straight into the passenger side had the force of an atom bomb. It tore off the doors, sent the front-side passenger seat through the driver’s-side window. It flipped the chassis, bouncing it across the road and ripped the engine apart as if it were no stronger than a spiderweb. It tossed wheels and hubcaps deep into the forest. It ignited bits of the gas tank, so that now tiny flames lap at the wet road. Gayle Forman.Gayle Forman worked as a journalist for Seventeen and Elle before becoming a novelist; If I Stay became a 2014 film starring Chloë Grace Moretz.
Books that feel like this
More by Gayle Forman
Where She Went
Gayle Forman, 2011
A famous rock star and a celebrated cellist, once in love, meet again in New York and have one night to say what three years of silence swallowed.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is If I Stay for me?
- You may like it if you are drawn to quiet contemporary YA about family, music and love under sudden loss. Be aware that the crash is described in graphic detail and the grief stays heavy throughout.
- What is If I Stay like?
- The story moves in a hush of grief and tenderness, with a cellist’s voice and flashes of ordinary family love. Feels like grief, tenderness and hope. About family, love and freedom.
- What should I read after If I Stay?
- If you liked If I Stay, try Night Road (Kristin Hannah), Regretting You (Colleen Hoover) and The Fault in Our Stars (John Green).
A taste of the feed
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