Review: WHERE SHE WENT by Gayle Forman

I'm not going to hold you in suspense on my opinion -- I'm giving it right off the bat.  Mainly because I want to shout it from the rooftops.  I LOVED THIS BOOK.  Hands down one of, if not the best, books I've read this year.


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 Julliard'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.

Adam Wilde's voice is so real; so pained and authentic and captivating.  I marked this line because it blew me away and just epitomizes the awesome tone of this book.  (By way of background, Adam has just "lost his shit" - i.e., he's crying.)  The line: "She holds me until I recover my Y chromosome."  Every line that Forman has in her story just feels like something a 21-year-old brooding rock star would think.

The book starts out incredibly sad. We see everything that's happened to Adam since Mia left for Julliard.  Slowly, we get the heartbreaking details, the ensuing depression, the crazy spark of angst that fueled his song writing and launched his band into super stardom.  And from the beginning, we know we're in hands of a boy on the brink. One who shuns his success and mourns the girl friend who never died.  He looks like many other rock stars probably looked before ending their own lives or falling into a drug-induced oblivion.  And he knows it.

But even once Mia and Adam reunite, it's still awkward and bumbling.  There are so many missteps and hurt feelings to patch over.  And I will NOT (intentionally) give away any spoilers, but I felt like the book was going to end in a good place.  Not ideal, but still a place where Adam could grow and move on.  So when I got to the true ending, I was so blown away and relieved and happy that I was beside myself.

Even though Where She Went is a shift in perspective and happens three years later, it still expertly weaves in details from If I Stay and unites the two stories.  Y'all know I'm not normally a sappy contemporary reader, but I will forever be a Gayle Forman fan.  This book rocks and it gets a

5 Greek coin rating.  HFAC!!  Go hence and procure your own copy today.