Jooho Oh
If I Stay Book Review
If I Stay is a book about a 17-year old girl, Mia who lives in a small town with her family in Portland, Oregon. Mia is in a relationship with Adam, a guitarist and singer in a band called “Shooting Star” and she ends up to fall in love with him. Her dad is currently a teacher at a school and her mom works for a travel agency in town. She has a younger brother, Teddy and a best friend who’s name is Kim. Mia has a passion for playing the cello and is expecting to go to Juilliard after high school. One day, her and her family go to meet her parents old music friends on a winter day as school gets cancelled. In the blink of an eye, her life changes as they get in a car crash. Before all of this occurs, she develops a strong relationship with Adam as they fall in love. Mia is left to choose between life and death and goes through a journey that flashes back and forth from her real life to her “spirit”. Her parents die in an instant, and later on Teddy is reported dead too. So if Mia woke up, she would have to deal with grief and live with someone else. The theme of this book is sacrifice because Mia makes a hard decision in real life whether to sacrifice her relationship with Adam or give up her dreams of going to Juilliard. Another is when Mia is caught between life and death and has to chose either to stay/wake up and go back to her normal life, or remain and leave as a “spirit” forever. I believe Mia wanted to stay because of her future and Adam, but she was scared at the fact that she would have to live without her family and it would be hard for her. I would recommend this book to any teenage girl because it has a variety of moods from love, to heartbreak, to sad and back to happy. The book also has a lot of imagery that helps you imagine the situation in your head well. Also, it has an exciting chain of events that occurs in an organized way so the reader doesn’t get confused or bored. The author added a good amount of excitement and sadness to balance out feelings and emotions. A good quote that explains the theme well is on page 192, “Sometimes you make choices and sometimes choices make you". This is a good example of the theme because you have to make a choice and sacrifice some things in life and everything happens for a reason. The book is filled with many different moods and expressions that makes you want to keep reading and overall teaches you to do whatever you believe will be best for you. Everyone should read this book and find out Mia's final decision in whether to stay or leave forever.
I liked how the story went right off the bat with explaining the conflict, and stating the characters from the beginning was efficient, and giving the setting right away was also efficient to the reader as well. Was there more of a a conflict which was important than the car crash, or no? How close are Adam and the protagonist? Maybe you could've given some more character development through the story.
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