If I Stay

My favorite book of 2014 was If I Stay by Gayle Forman. I chose this book because it stood out to me in a different way. I felt more connected to this book than any other book I've read before.

   This book is about a girl Mia who is about seventeen years old. When her family gets into a car accident, leaving her in a coma and the rest of her family dead, she is faced with the decision to live or to die. Mia doesn't know how she will live without her parents and little brother but doesn't know how to leave her boyfriend Adam. Mia is a cello prodigy and before she met Adam, cello was all she did. Throughout the book it flashes back to her life before the accident and showing us what an amazing life she had, then back to the hospital where left and right something was going wrong.

   What I like best about this book was how real everything seemed. I felt as if I experiencing the book myself, not about being in a coma but being on the outside with her friends and family.

   The part of this book that will stick with me is the part where her grandfather is talking to her in the hospital. Mia's dad was in a rock band for a very long time and it wasn't until her little brother was born that he decides to quit and be more with his family. Mia always though that her dad quit his band and stopped what he loved so much because Teddy was born. But it wasn't until he realized that Mia wasn't playing cello to get anything, she was playing purely from the heart. That's why he quit his band. He sold his drum set to buy Mia a cello so they wouldn't have to rent one anymore. When her grandfather tells her this, while she was still in the coma, it showed her that she wasn't so much the outcast of her family. She never realized her dad cared so much about her that he would give up something that was such a great part of his life. This will forever be my favorite part of this book.