Bookanista Review: WHERE SHE WENT

Last Thursday I opened up my mailbox and there was a shiny ARC of Gayle Forman’s WHERE SHE WENT. Of course, I had to read it right away. Read below to see what I thought.

Here’s the official blurb from the publisher:

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.

I have a deep, abiding love for IF I STAY. In fact, I wrote a paper on it for school because the story structure impressed me so much. Mia is a classical cellist. She thinks, breathes, feels music. That story flowed in and out of memories like the whole book was this beautiful composition. And the story ended just perfectly.

So when I heard Ms. Forman wrote a sequel, I had this immediate gut reaction of a howling monkey shrieking, NO! When I finally calmed down and read the blurb, I discovered the sequel would be told by Adam, three years into the future when Mia and Adam have broken up.  And I knew I HAD to read this book.

My first worry…Adam’s voice would sound just like Mia’s. WRONG. That wasn’t the case at all. Adam has a voice that is all his own. In fact, the structure in this book is different. More jarring and less flowing. Fitting since Adam is a rock musician. The structure fits his musical style.

My second worry…the ending. IF I STAY had a complex ending that didn’t tie up all the loose endings. It left you thinking about what happened to the characters down the line. I didn’t want everything to wrap up in WHERE SHE WENT. Without ruining the story or giving anything away, I’ll just say the ending was very satisfying.  This is definitely a book I’ll read more than once.

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