Final Post- If I Stay

I am really content on my choice to read If I stay by Gayle Forman this semester. I really liked this book as a whole and love how author Gayle Forman chose to write it. The narrator is Mia, the main character, and the main point of the book is about how a family gets into a car crash on a snowy winters day, and the entire family dies besides the oldest sister, Mia. The essential question of the book is if Mia stays on earth or goes to heaven, but Forman tells many stories in this one book. She shows Mia's childhood life with her family, and her life when she meets her boyfriend Adam, whom was Mia's first love. Forman describes this in an interesting way; through a series of flashbacks. When Forman switches to present tense again, Mia is experiencing a literal "out of body experience". She can walk around the hospital where she is recovering and see how everyone is reacting while her literal body is in a hospital bed, unconscious. This is an interesting approach because it is still unknown what happens while a person is unconscious, whether they can hear you or not. Forman makes you feel like Mia is your own friend, and her experience moves you and makes you feel attached to her. In the end, you are rooting for Mia to make the right choice, and she finally does. The ending is bittersweet, and she stays on earth with Adam and her best friend and lets her family go to heaven because she knows that thats what they would have wanted. Overall, I am very glad I read this book and because I liked it so much I am well into the next one, Where She Went, also by Gayle Forman.