stay, he says.

The book to movie If I Stay comes out this weekend, so I decided to dive right into the novel because seeing a movie before reading the book is blasphemy. I am one of those weird people who enjoys going to the movies by myself, and I NEVER have the time to justify doing it, so I made a pact with myself to go on Sunday. Just me, a big bucket of over buttered heart attack popcorn, and any number of strangers. Life is beautiful, and so was this novel by Gayle Foreman.

If I Stay is narrated by main character seventeen-year-old Mia Hall who has to make an impossible decision after her family is killed in a car accident on an ordinary snow day in Oregon and she is the only survivor. Her body sits in a coma for most of the novel, but her spirit roams around, watching the doctors, nurses, her other family members, friends and boyfriend of two years, Adam deal with the stress of the accident and worry of whether she is ever going to wake up. Mia narrates back and forth between life with her family (who she is freakishly close with), growing up with two punk rock parents and a little brother a decade younger than her, and her relationship with Adam, how they met, when they fell in love, special moments...to the present day as she lays in the hospital, deciding whether or not she should leave and go with her family, or stay and face the devastation, but also a life. You see, Mia is a cellist prodigy and is pretty certain she has been accepted to Julliard, so it is quite a life she will leave behind. It's all up to her.