Book # 20

I have just finished up an awesome book, if i stay, by Gayle Forman. This is truly an "achingly beautiful story" like NPR's The Roundtable said in the front cover.

Another wonderful find from the warehouse book sale, $1.

This is a story about a girl who has lost everything from the living world, and needs to make a decision about whether to stay or go. It's about her struggle to live without her family, or to die with her family. It's about giving up the familiar, and going into the unknown.

I love this book, because of it's bold tale, the flashbacks, the memory, the sensory detail surrounding the music of her life. It's a tale that makes you look at both sides of her life, and wonder exactly what she will decide. Will she stay? In the end it's a decision only she can make, and it's a hard one at that. The pull between the living and the dead, the light and the dark, the known and the unknown, the familiar and the unfamiliar, the hard and the easy, is what pulls you into this book, and keeps you reading. Mia, the main character, has a love for classical music that isn't always seen these days, and it refreshing and awakening. It makes me want to get out my saxophone, and play some familiar tunes. This book is also about love, and how that love makes life difficult no matter how good it feels, whether it's family love or relationship love. I have never read this author before, but if she has published more books, then I would definitely read them. I think a lot of people would enjoy this book. It's beautiful, sad, complex, and spiritual in a different way than usual.

Rating: (out of 7 stars)