This is another of what I call the misery books! A couple of years ago, you couldn’t move for all the books about people dying, usually from cancer. Don’t get me wrong, there were some really good books in the genre – notably ‘Before I Die’ and ‘Life on the Refrigerator Door’.
If I Stay is a book from the misery genre, however this book far from being morbid is full of love and hope. It follows the life and death (?) of a seventeen year old girl Mia. Through the clever and seamless use of flashbacks the book tells Mia’s story through her eyes and voice. It tells of her blossoming love for Adam, her fears of being apart from the crowd and most of all her deep family life.
As I said early this isn’t a sad book considering the tradegy in it. You come out of it feeling not that you’ve been through the mill but in a postive, uplifting way.
