Book Review: Where She Went by Gayle Forman

Title: Where She Went
Author: Gayle Forman
Series: If I Stay #2
Pages: 260
Publisher: Random House
Date of UK Publication: April 28th 2011
Source: Borrowed from friend
Synopsis from Goodreads: 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.


My Thoughts:
Where She Went continues the story from If I Stay, but three years later. Mia is in New York, attending Julliard, and Adam is a famous rockstar. Adam hasn't heard from Mia for 3 years, and Where She Went is told from Adam's point of view. He's having trouble coping with being famous, and to top it all off for him, he has no idea why Mia has never called him back from New York.

I liked that Where She Went was told from Adam's point of view, because it gave us an insight into his feelings and let the reader really understand what kind of person he has become, and just how badly Mia's sudden absence from his life affected him. I enjoyed the way that Gayle Forman expressed Adam's feelings, in a way that we never would have even guessed about had the book been written from Mia's point of view. I also enjoyed the way that we got a new view of Mia, which showed her as an actual living person, rather than a ghost of a person narrating the story from a hospital bed.

Not a lot actually happened in the story, plot wise. The book takes place over a period of about a week, much like the first book. Looking back though, the characters went through an awful lot and changed in themselves, so it didn't really matter that not much happened. As in If I Stay, there were flashbacks to Adam's time between Mia's accident and the present day, which was good because it kept the story interesting. I liked how even though the storyline was different, a lot of the aspects of Where She Went were the same as If I Stay, and the continuity between the books was really good.

Where She Went is a brilliant sequel, but it is not quite as good as If I Stay. *Almost*, but not quite. I felt the ending to the first novel felt finished and that a second book was not necessary, so I was a little hesitant to read this one, in case it ruined If I Stay completely, but I'm glad to say that I really enjoyed it, and it definitely did no ruining of any kind. If you loved If I Stay, then you'll love Where She Went too. :)


My Rating:

I give it 4.5 Feet!

Challenges:
2011 100+ Reading Challenge #43