REVIEW: If I Stay/Where She Went aka TEAM ADAM!

Last week I noticed a lot of bloggers posting about books it seemed like everyone else had read that they hadn't. Which got me thinking about it on my end. I bought a copy of If I Stay by Gayle Forman about a month ago when I was visiting my mom. I was worried I'd need another book to read if my flight home got delayed, but it didn't, and so I've had If I Stay hanging around on my nightstand ever since. Everyone and their dog raves over it, but it just never jumped out at me to read.

Well, I finished Sarah Mlynowski's Ten Things We Did (review forthcoming on that one, because I really loved it), and I needed something to fill the void between that and the release of Lola and the Boy Next Door. And so on Friday morning, I picked up If I Stay. I read it on  the train ride to get my haircut, on the train ride back, and at lunch. Midway through my meal at Four Bugers, I realized I was going to have to get my lunch wrapped up to go, because I was about the burst into the loudest, hardest sobs of my life.

Because If I Stay is WONDERFUL. I don't want to write a crazy in-depth review, because I think the book really is better if you just sort of enter the world on the first page and get wrapped up in the story. And you will. I finished the book by Friday night, and that was WITH finishing up my copyedits AND cleaning my entire house in preparation for my mom's visit on Saturday!

It was so good, that I hadn't even finished If I Stay yet when I ran out to pick up the sequel, Where She Went. And then I read that in TWO days, and that's while my mom was in town!

The one thing I want to say about Gayle Forman's writing: she makes you feel like you've known these characters your whole life. I don't know how, in about seven pages, she makes you fall so deeply in love with Mia's parents that when the big bad occurs, you can barely hold yourself together. I have never sobbed as hard and as many times in a book as I did while reading If I Stay, and it's 100% a result of the incredibly rich and wonderful characters Gayle wrote.

And the last thing I'll say?

Team Adam. All the way.



Which brings me to the last thing: I now have an Adam-shaped hole in my reading life. I need more of him, or characters like him, which is to say YA guys with some serious heart. Examples? Marcus Flutie, Patrick from Fixing Delilah, Etienne from Anna and the French Kiss, pretty much any of Sarah Dessen's homeboys, especially Dexter, Owen, and Wes.

So, dear blog readers, what books should I read if I want more Adam in my life?! Leave the suggestions in the comments, or tweet them with the  hashtag #YAguys