Melissa Haworth-Cox, Yearbook Editor

The Best-Seller “If I Stay” by Gayle Forman is about 17-year-old Mia Hall and her life in Portland, Oregon.

The novel begins with a family around the breakfast table in the cold, snowy morning before school has begun.

The radio is turned on to announce a snow day. Since Mia’s father is a teacher this means everyone in the family has a free day.

This is aside from the mother who calls in sick. Therefore, the family goes on a trip to visit family friends.

Throughout this storyline we learn about the main character in natural segments of memory and backstory.

Mia is a musician at heart that has been infatuated with playing the cello since she was small.

She is also the daughter of a rock grunge family. Her father was in a rock band in Oregon when she was born.

Music had always been a part of Mia’s life and became the passion that drove the eight-hour-a-day practice sessions.

Music is also what brought her and her rock band boyfriend, Adam Wilde.

When he saw the way she fell into her music when playing he knew he loved her and it grew from there.

Unlike most teens, Mia was preferable to classical music. This is where the story begins.

When the trip begins there is debate of which music to play. In her luck, Mia was the winner and classical music prevailed.

However in the midst of her memories and thoughts, the car crashes and she is catapulted out of her body in the form of a spirit.

In the wreckage Mia is shocked to find that her parents are dead in the car.

She goes frantically searching for her little brother, Teddy when she spots her own bloody, mangled body.

The rest of the story is spent with Mia in a state of limbo within the hospital while her body is in a coma waiting for Adam to visit her and reminiscing on memories.

In the hospital she is told by one of the nurses that she has control of whether or not she wakes up.

The storyline follows through with this idea. In times of despair her body falters and in times of joy her body recovers.

For example, when she finds out that her brother has died as well her body becomes unstable and has to go through surgery again.

It is at this point that the question “will she wake up” reaches a climax because she is now an orphan that has lost her parents and brother.

The story concludes when she does finally get to see Adam, which sets up the key elements for the next novel. This novel explains what happens after Mia’s incident.

In the motion picture they have set up all of these key elements in order to make it possible to make a movie of the sequel.

However, I have not seen anything regarding a release of the sequel in a motion picture as of late.

I thoroughly enjoyed the second novel even more than the first and think it would make a better movie than the original.

Therefore, I highly recommend reading the sequel if you have read “If I Stay” and if you aren’t a reader then look into the motion picture sequel if it is released.