Started off great, lost me after the beginning chapters…
When I started reading the first couple pages of If I Stay, written by Gayle Forman, I thought to myself, “wow, I am going to like this book a lot!” and reading the reviews just capitalized that thought. Unfortunately, I was proved wrong. The beginning of the story starts out very interesting, left me wanting to read more about Mia and her family. With the car crash resulting in the whole family not making it except the teenage daughter, Mia, I expected to feel immense feelings and sadness throughout the whole story, but, wasn’t feeling that why as I continued the story. In my opinion, it was extremely repetitive and I felt like I read the same thing 10 times.
As I said, the beginning was great. Explaining how the family is really close and how the parents are just the most awesome parents ever and how Mia has a great boyfriend that she loves. However, after the accident happened, the story continued with flashbacks to Mia’s past, her perfect life. Describing her perfect rock musician parents, her perfect musician boyfriend which she loves, how perfect she is at the cello, and how perfect her life was in general. I found myself skimming through the flashbacks and trying to figure out if she stays or not but these random flashbacks, which were getting In the way of the main point of the story, kept going on and on.
As patient as I tried to be and as much as I wanted to enjoy this book, I did not. I do not recommend this book because of its lack of story line and a great amount of unnecessary flashbacks from the main character. In my opinion, the flashbacks were a little much and I think the story could have been great otherwise.