Summary
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.
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Author Notes
Gayle Forman is an award-winning, young adult author, who was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1970. Forman began her career as a journalist, writing for Seventeen magazine. Her work has since appeared in publications such as Details, Jane, The Nation, Elle, Cosmopolitan and The New York Times Magazine.
In 2002, she took a trip around the world. The experience helped to form her first book, a travelogue entitled, You Can't Get There from Here: A Year on the Fringes of a Shrinking World, which was published in 2004.
Her first YA fiction was her novel, Sisters in Sanity, which was published in 2007 and based on one of her articles for Seventeen. Her other YA titles include: If I Stay and its companion, Where She Went; Just One Day, and its sequels, Just One Year and Just One Night. In 2015 she made The New York Times Best Seller List with her titles I Was Hereand Where She Went.
(Bowker Author Biography)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Three years after the tragic accident that killed the family of his former girlfriend, Mia Hall, the now-famous rock star Adam Wilde finds himself at New York City's Carnegie Hall for Mia's breakout cello concert. Convinced that merely hearing her play will be enough to satisfy his curiosity, Adam hides in the audience but is stunned when she asks him to come backstage after the show. Their awkward reunion sparks a night of painful reminiscing, heartbreaking closure, and hopeful discoveries. Using the voice of Adam, Forman continues the gripping narrative started in If I Stay (Dutton, 2009). After months of rehab from the car accident, Mia leaves Oregon for the east coast to attend the prestigious Juilliard School. Adam remains on the west coast to pursue his own rising musical career as the lead in his band. Mysteriously Mia cuts off all contact with him. Simultaneously freed and abandoned, Adam plunges into a depression, which also fuels the writing that launches his band to stardom. This novel is best suited to readers familiar with the first book. However, Forman convincingly establishes the relationship with flashbacks and Adam's current angst. Though not as poignant as its predecessor, this book has compelling characters and a romance so deliciously fated that readers will be willing to suspend believability and embrace the growing mood of a fairy tale. Fans of the exceptional first novel won't be able to put this one down.-Lynn Rashid, Marriotts Ridge High School, Marriottsville, MD (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
"I know it's really cheesy-crass even-to compare my being dumped to the accident that killed Mia's family, but I can't help it. Because for me, at any rate, the aftermath felt exactly the same." Forman follows up her bestselling If I Stay with a story that is equally if not more powerful, set three years after the previous book and told from the perspective of Mia's former boyfriend, Adam. Mia and Adam haven't seen each other since she left for Juilliard, deserting him just months after emerging from her coma. Adam's anguish found an outlet in songwriting, and the resulting album, Collateral Damage, has become a sensation, turning Adam and his band into bona fide rock stars, though he's barely keeping it together. Mia's career as a cellist is taking off as well, and a chance meeting in New York City gives Mia and Adam the opportunity to exorcise the ghosts of their past. Having spent If I Stay in Mia's head, readers are, like Adam, thrust into a state of unknowing regarding Mia's thoughts and motivations. It's an extremely effective device, and one that makes this reunion all the more heartrending. Ages 14-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
In If I Stay (rev. 7/09), Adam's love pulled Mia back from the brink of death after a tragic automobile accident. The sequel finds Adam three years after Mia dumped him, drowning in the pain of losing her. Separated by the weight of grief (Mia's entire family died in the car crash), Adam and Mia's lives have grown worlds apart. Mia is a gifted cellist making her Carnegie Hall debut, while Adam is a paparazzi-hounded rock star with a platinum record. Despite his fame and an A-list Hollywood girlfriend, Adam is still consumed with love for Mia and depends on a cabinet full of prescription drugs to combat anxiety and sleeplessness. Fate brings the two together in New York City right before each is set to leave on tour; tension mounts and sparks fly as Mia shows Adam her New York and Adam braces himself to find out why she left him. While flashing back to fill in Adam's rise to stardom, encounters with groupies, and alienation from his bandmates, the immediate story takes place in just one night, and Mia and Adam's imminent separation heightens the romance. Though not as gripping as If I Stay, Where She Went's angst-ridden narrative offers the appeal of a sensitive rock star whose only hope for salvation is true love. lauren adams (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
In this compelling sequel toIf I Stay(2009),Forman fast forwards three years in the lives of Mia and Adam, two budding musicians. They had been lovers, bound by an intimate and painful past that included the accidental death of Mia's family in an automobile accident. Whereas the prior title focused on Mia and her decision to remain alive as her body lay in a hospital between life and death, this book focuses on Adam, now an angst-ridden rock star. This installment reintroduces the pair as virtual strangers who have not interacted since Mia left for college three years prior and cut off communication with Adam. Unsurprisingly the power of music reunites the couple in a chance meeting at Carnegie Hall, where Mia, now a world-renowned cellist, takes center stage. Their reunion sets off a fast-paced, one-night tour of New York City, who in which Mia introduces Adam to her favorite haunts and new reality. Throughout the night, they both struggle to make sense of their feelings and to find closure, all revealed in Adam's agonized present-tense narration. Although their story is compressed into 24 hours, both characters spring to life, and their pain-filled back story and current realities provide depth and will hold readers fast.(Fiction. YA)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This companion to Forman's New York Times best-seller, If I Stay (2009), picks up three years after Oregon teen Mia survived the car accident that killed her parents and brother. Compacted once again into a 24-hour period of seismic emotional shifts, this time the story is narrated by Mia's former boyfriend, Adam. Still haunted by the bewildering dissolution of their relationship, Adam, now a punk-rock star, stumbles across a concert in which Mia, a rising cellist, will perform solo. His spontaneous ticket purchase begins their awkward, charged reunion, and in a sleepless night spent roaming New York City, they talk, argue, and gradually recapture the profound, enduring bonds between them. As in If I Stay, Forman tells an emotionally wrenching story that believably captures the mature depth and intensity possible in teenage love as well as the infinite ways that grief of all kinds permeates daily life, from the wormholes of memory that spin out from small moments to the unconscious ways that past pain can influence present decisions. Sure to please the first book's legions of fans.--Engberg, Gillia. Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Right after Mia decides to keep living, she walks out of Adam's life, seemingly forever. Mia heads to the East Coast to Julliard, leaving Adam to wallow in his misery and score an entire album of angst-ridden songs, which promptly top the charts. Three years later, riding the wave of superstardom, Adam, still suffering from the break, runs into Mia in New York City. They have one night to say all of the things they've left unsaid. Read by Dan Bittner, who efficiently develops the poetry and lyrical qualities of the book without making it fatuous, Adam's story, like Mia's, progresses while fluctuating between past and present, allowing the reader insight and empathy. Though it packs much less of an emotional punch than its prequel, If I Stay, Where She Went creates a tidy "happy ever after." Verdict Fans of the previous novel will be pleased with the sense of conclusion, and the romance, but new readers may feel let down here by the low-key story and lack of emotional build-up. Recommended for fans of Sarah Dessen's That Summer and Nicholas Sparks's The Notebook. [The Dutton Juvenile hc, published in April, was a New York Times best seller; see "35 Going on 13," BookSmack! 6/16/11.-Ed.]-Terry Ann Lawler, Phoenix P.L. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.