Where She Went By Gayle Forman

Blurb: 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 Juilliard’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 future – and 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.

Stunning. Absolutely Stunning.

Gayle Forman writes in such a raw fashion, everything…all emotions are bare for the reader to see and experience, yet the edges of that experience aren’t blunt; they are almost poetic. There is a subtle lyrical quality to her prose. One of the few authors whose descriptions are better than any dialogues included in the story.

I loved this book, absolutely adored it. Adore might not be an apt term considering its so painful and gritty with emotions yet I can’t seem to stop saying it. You’d think that a girl losing her entire family in the blink of an eye would be a tragedy that nothing else could ever compare to and that is true, yet Adam losing Mia (as well as her family) somehow stands in the same spectrum of pain once you read this book.

There were no over the top plot twists. The story is stretched little over a day and it takes you on a journey of three long years. You feel Adam’s pain, his claustrophobia, his abhorrence towards the invasion of his privacy just because he is a star, You feel his confusion and heartbreak over Mia…this book is nothing short of a roller coaster, it’s therapeutic.

Anyone who has read If I stay needs to read this one, it’s not even optional. You might think that If I stay is a story in itself yet it’s not. If you only read that and not this one it would be like you had read only half a book. This is the other marvelous half. The happy ending, the final exhale that Mia and Adam’s story deserves.

It’s filled with these small snippets at the beginning of each chapter, snippets of songs from the album that Adam wrote once he lost Mia. Those snippets…they are beautiful and so quotable. The songs at the end from Prepare For Landing were just as good. In my honest opinion this book was far better than If I Stay.