If I Stay (If I Stay #1) by Gayle Forman

Book Blurb (from Goodreads)
On a day that started like any other, Mia had everything: a loving family, a gorgeous, admiring boyfriend, and a bright future full of music and full of choices. In an instant, almost all of that is taken from her. Caught between life and death, between a happy past and an unknowable future, Mia spends one critical day contemplating the only decision she has left. It is the most important decision she'll ever make.

Simultaneously tragic and hopeful, this is a romantic, riveting, and ultimately uplifting story about memory, music, living, dying, loving.

My Review: 

 I was looking forward to finally picking this book up. I had heard a lot of praise for this book and I had pretty high expectations for it and it did not live up to them at all. I don't know  if this was because I was expecting too much (probably) but I did not enjoy it as much as I had hoped to. 

The plot of this book was extremely creative and fresh. I have never seen another book with a plot line even similar to this, or that plays with the ideas of the book quite the same as Gayle Forman did. There were memories spread throughout the book, along with the chapters of Mia contemplating if she should stay. These memories were interesting at the beginning but towards the end started to feel repetitive. It always came back to her problems with Adam or her problems with deciding if she should go to Julliard or stay in her hometown. There was another problem that I had which was that the moments in the plot which were suppose to be sad (and they were), did not manage to make me cry. I was annoyed by this because I felt like I was missing out on something that everybody had experienced whilst reading this book. I never understood how the 'ghost thing' worked.I think that it may be her subconscious wandering, but I am actually glad that we never got an explanation, it kept that small sense of mystery in the book. 

  Mia was interesting at times, but I also found that at the beginning she was a bit bland. Her personality was a bit of, but towards the end her personality had developed more and I could understand her train of thoughts better. I did find that she did sulk around a lot during the book, but that is something that I can not really complain about because she just lost her family, anyone would sulk around if that had happened to them. Kim was the cool best friend of Mia's. I wish that we saw more of her (actually I wish that we saw more of every character apart from Mia). She was funny throughout Mia's memories and I feel like she was the glue between them, and was Mia's other half. I found Adam okay. I liked the idea of a classical musician and an emo-core band member (as Kim put it) dating. It made it interesting and complicated and they were both good for each other and shared the same love for music. 

Looking at my review I think that I should be giving the book 3 stars but for some reason 3 stars does not fully fit with my opinion on the book. I do not think that I enjoyed it enough to give it those 3 stars so without really knowing the reason why, I am going to give this book 2 out of 5 stars.