Title of Book:If I stay

Author:  Gayle Forman

# of Pages: 210

Star Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Why This Book has Value:

I think this book is valuable for teenagers as well as for other people because it teaches that how meeting someone so young doesn't always end bad and you can build a long term relationship with someone even though it can be difficult but it will all be worth it at the end, it teaches us that life is full of decisions sometimes difficult ones but we always end up making the right decisions. It also shows how important it is for parents and kids to trust and understand one each other, in the story it shows us how Adam shows Mia that people should love you for who you are and not for who they think you can change to, I think this is a very important message for teens so they can accept themselves for what they are. She is also an amazing big sister , she loves and cares about her little brother.

Summary of story:

If I stay is a novel that captures the life of  Mia Hall  17-year-old cellist with an amazing life. She has a loving rocker boyfriend named Adam , very cool and understanding parents, an adorable little brother, and a nearly assured acceptance to Julliard. When they were on their happiest moments on an unexpected snow day, something happened  and Mia's family is involved in a fatal car accident. Standing next to her  body, Mia realizes that she can see what's happening to her and her family  from an state of consciousness. She follows her body back to the hospital, where she discovers she was the only survivor out of all her family and in between the two days that she is deciding in between living or dying she has flashbacks to memorable times in her life , like learning the cello, having amazing reunions with her family and to falling in love with Adam, while all that is happening to Mia ,  Adam, Mia's grandparents, and her best friend, Kim , try to convince her to wake up, but it's a hard decision because  Mia must decide whether to fight and live with the love of her life and live without her family  or join her family in death.

Setting:  

The parts where it talks about her past is during her junior and senior years of high school, and  the present is divided by time that starts at 7:09 A.M. when they wake up in the snow day and ends at around 7:16 A.M. the next day when she wakes up. The place where everything takes place in the  past mostly focuses in  her high school and when it comes about her family it takes place in the house, while the present focuses more when all her family ar at the hospital Mia is staying, it's not the hospital in her hometown but a small local place that looks more like an old-age home than a medical center.

Theme:
The main theme in this book is the Power of Love and it occurs throughout the novel. In this novel, its amazing to see what love can motivate a person to do things that other people cannot ever imagine doing. Like Mia’s boyfriend, Adam, tries to visit his girlfriend, Mia, who is in comma, lying on the bed at ICU, but the nurses don't let Adam to enter the room where Mia is,because they think Adam is a stranger But then Adam tries to make a plan to see Mia.

       “We need to go upstairs to the ICU and then maybe someone could shout that Brooke Vega is here. That might do it. If it doesn’t, then sing. All we really want is to lure a couple of curious nurses out, and that grouchy head nurse after them. Once she comes out of the ICU and sees all of us in the hall, she’ll be too busy dealing with us to notice that Adam has slipped inside” (page 140 and paragraph 4). In this passage from the book, Adam makes a plan  to distract nurses and workers of hospital using  a famous punk singer, so that he can get into Mia’s  room and see her without interruptions. That's why Adam just for love calls the famous punk singer , and I think its crazy all the things he did during their relationship just because Mia was the love of his life , he even changed in many ways for her, but in a good way.

Characters:
In this story there is many characters , but the main one is Mia , all the other characters are people that are very close to her, many of the characters are very similar like Adam and Mia’s family are very alike because they all like rock music except from Mia which is very weird because she only likes the cello, her and her best friend are like the opposite but even though they are different they are like sisters.