liked sitelinkIf I Stay, but I absolutely loved sitelinkWhere She Went, I'm having a hard time trying to compile my thoughts on the novel because I'm still reeling from the deep, heartbreaking effect it had on me,
sitelinkTatiana's review said what I've been thinking most of all:
"I mean, If I Stay was all about people dying and lying in coma and there were hardly any tears in my eyes and here I spent hours sobbing over a guy's broken heart"
That about sums up the reaction I had.
If someone asked you which would upset you more, you'd think the answer was obvious, A young girl losing her entire family in a car crash versus the angst of a lovesick rockstar, . . there should be no contest right But Forman conveys love and loss with such raw emotion, sitelinkIf I Stay was more subtle, told through mostly happy memories of the life Mia had shared with her family, It was moving. sitelinkWhere She Went wasn't moving, it was gutwrenchingly sad, I mean "I've ran out of tissues" sad,
I honestly felt every bit of sadness, despair and anger with Adam, I don't recall ever being so in tune with a male protagonist's emotions, In fact it's been an awful long time since I've cared so much about the outcome of any character, In most situations, characters like Adam would be made to seem selfish for thinking of
themselves when Mia had lost pretty much everything in that car crash, Not here. Or at least, not in my opinion, Forman obviously has a real knack for getting inside a person's head and making the reader understand feelings that may otherwise be questionable,
I definitely want to read more from Gayle Forman in the future, That the first two novels I've read by her would affect me so much just makes me wonder what else she has up her sleeves, I can't wait to find out,
sitelinkBlog sitelinkFacebook sitelinkTwitter sitelinkInstagram sitelinkYoutube This was less of a book and more of a roller coaster, You know how you sometimes get off a roller coaster, and your legs feel like jelly and your middle feels like someone's wringing you dry
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I'm not going to give you plot synopses.
I'm not going to give you my favourite quotes, I am, however, going to tell you a story, I knew I would love Where She Went before I ever read it, I read a review of the book about a month ago, and it inspired me to stop procrastinating and pull If I Stay out of the TBR pile I had consigned it to.
I really liked it. If I Stay, I mean, It didn't blow me away, I didn't need any of the tissues I had kept on standby and my feelings towards the book were positive, but lukewarm,
But there was one shining, burning beacon in the book that drew me time and again, The one person in the entire book who seemed almost real, as if he could walk off the pages of the book, and into my life, so I could mend all the broken pieces.
Adam was the reason I read If I Stay, and Adam is the reason I read Where She Went,
You know how you sometimes just feel like certain characters speak to you I'm not talking about a literary crush, so much as I am about a level of literary empathy.
I could just picture, so clearly, the ruined, devastated Adam who opens this sequel, and it made my heart hurt, As a sort of karmic retribution for my stonehearted failure to be moved to tears by Mia's plight, I was forced to start sobbing around thirty pages into Where She Went, and I don't think I stopped.
There is no way to describe my feelings about this book without sounding crazed, So if men in white coats come to cart me off in a straitjacket, please miss me and like my reviews in memoriam! Yes even deeply emotional reviews do not stop me plugging my other ones! Also I needed the emotional breather, dammit!
Rage.
If there's one primary emotion I felt towards Mia for most of this book, it was the same rage that Adam was consumed by, Oh, I didn't need the big reveal at the end to know why she broke up with him, or even why she did it so cruelly, but I was still practically incoherent with rage on Adam's behalf.
I understood Mia, but I still bled for Adam,
You know what's really weird about my experience with this book I could literally feel the chaos in my head building along with Adam, And when he finally lets loose on Brooklyn Bridge and goes through his cathartic moment, I felt calm, too, Is it weird that I practically drowned in this book, or is it just the effect of a really, really good storyteller For the sake of my sanity, I'm going to assume it's the latter.
So, I was practically begging for a nonYA ending, where things are resolved, but not with an HEA,
This book spoke to me so profoundly, About loss. About love. About putting the pieces of yourself back together, but still finding those jagged edges, those bits that won't fit together, It took me on a trip to the dark side of an emotional breakdown, and then it pulled me out of there and put me back on an even keel.
There are not too many storytellers out there who can make me lose myself so thoroughly in a story that I feel it, rather than simply reading about it.
So, in my book, Gayle Forman gets a gold star and a standing ovation, but please excuse me while I go recover with a truly crappy book, I think sitelinkProm and Prejudice is calling my name, In the meantime, if you want to be a sobbing mess too, please go add Where She Went to your reading pile, after finishing this, ive realised two things:
the sequels in gayle formans series are sooo much stronger than the first book much better in terms of plot, andmy only issue with this is one of things that stopped me from enjoying if i stay, and that is the constant back and forth between the present moment in NYC and flashbacks to the past.
her guy characters are sooo much more compelling and interesting than her girl characters i loved reading reading from adam perspective such raw emotion!.
i was more invested in what was happening between adam and mia and their reunion, so the flashbacks to random points over the past three years distracted me from that.
i appreciate that they are used for character development and filling the reader in on whats happened, but i often found myself skimming forward to the present day sections,
overall, i think this is the strongest book in this duology, its not perfect, but it is a wonderful ending to adam and mias story,
.stars This added absolutely nothing to this series, other than reconfirming how much I dislike these books Where She Went If I Stay,, Gayle Forman
It's been three years since the devastating accident.
. .
three years since Mia walked out of Adam's life forever, Now living on opposite coasts, Mia is Julliard's rising star and Adam is LA tabloid fodder, thanks to his new rock star status and celebrity girlfriend,
When Adam gets stuck in New York by himself, chance brings the couple together again, for one last night,
As they explore the city that has become Mia's home, Adam and Mia revisit the past and open their hearts to the futureand each other,
Told from Adam's point of view in the spare, lyrical prose that defined If I Stay, Where She Went explores the devastation of grief, the promise of new hope, and the flame of rekindled romance.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: دهم ماه نوامبر سالمیلادی
عنوان: جایی که او رفت کتاب دوم نویسنده: جیل گیل فورمن مترجم: فرزام حبیبی اصفهان تهران بهنامدرص شابک
کتاب نخست این دوگانه با عنوان : اگر بمانم است
نثر تغزلی ای که به اگر بمانم معنی داد در او کجا رفت جاییکه او رفت ویرانی غم است وعده ی امیدی تازه و تابش دوباره ی همان عشق شعله ور نثر این رمان نیز همانند نسخه نخست دوگانه شاعرانه و بازتاب ویرانی و غم نوید امیدی تازه و تابش همان عشق شعله ور است
سه سال از تصادف ویرانگر می گذرد, . . سه سال از زمانی که میا برای همیشه از زندگی آدام بیرون رفت سپری شده است هنگامیکه آدام به تنهایی در نیویورک گیر میافتد شانس او و میا را برای یک شب دیگر گرد هم میآورد همانطور که مشغول گشت و گذار در شهری هستند که اکنون خانه میا شده است آدام و میا دوباره پا به بگذشته ها میگذارند و دلهای خود را به آینده و بسوی یکدیگر میگشایند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی هجری خورشیدی ا. شربیانی.