What an amazing book that continued the story from If I Stay by Gayle Forman, which ended abruptly. A story told by her point of view as she is in the hospital after a major car accident, the first book kept me flipping pages well into the night and the same went for the sequel. I read it one day - 3 sittings.

Told from Adam, her boyfriend's, point of view. I absolutely loved that we heard the continuation of the story 3 years after the first book ended from a different perspective. And rarely do we hear a guy's point of view, so I had to remind myself a few times that we were in Adam's head. But I loved it - the twists and turns which kept me glued until the very end.

I would recommend this series to young and old alike. I am physically handing this book off to my mom and would recommend it for the majority of the age spectrum, but I think only the female readers would really enjoy this sweet and tender story.

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from my blog Kimmy's New Thing:
One of the best books I've read in the past few years was If I Stay by Gayle Forman. In fact, as recently as this past Christmas I talked about this book to my family. Well, actually, I was talking about the author, who had this amazing insight about Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, and we were talking about that book, and, well, you understand, right? Anyway, it was one of those "lucky coincidences" that I happened to win an ARC of the sequel Where She Went through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. It arrived Monday, and I finished reading it Tuesday evening.


This book is told from Adam's point of view, and it's set three years after the end of the previous book. We know that Mia has made the conscious decision to STAY, to not "pass over" along with her parents and brother. Adam is miserable, and he's alone. Mia, for reasons that are slowly fleshed out, broke ties with Adam soon after starting college at Julliard the fall after the accident. Adam is now an actual Rock Star, the kind with screaming fans and the inability to walk down a street without causing a riot, but musical success has not made him happy at all. Neither does his famous Hollywood girlfriend or his cabinet full of psycho-pharmaceuticals. What he needs are answers, and only Mia can give them; however, she's been silent. Answers are apparently beyond the reach of even the lead singer of one of the hottest rock bands on the planet.


Through a series of circumstances, Adam ends up face-to-face with Mia, and they have one night together, one night to talk, to work through three years of heartbreak, anger and misinformation. We should all be so lucky....


One of the concepts of the book is closure: how to get it, how it's necessary, how it hurts when you don't have it. I must admit that "needing closure" is a concept I've heard of, but never really understood until this book.


Another concept is about keeping the promises you make, even the ones you don't like and don't want to keep. Replayed in this book is Adam's promise to Mia: if she would "stay," not pass over, then he be there to help her, or he would let her live her life on her own, away from him if he was too much of a reminder of all that she lost. This is one of the reasons that Adam hasn't made more of an effort to contact Mia before now.


Overall, the book is heart-felt, heart-breaking and in general just plain wonderful. I highly recommend this book to readers who enjoy a deeply moving story. You may cry (I did) and you may slam the book shut in frustration and have to walk away (I did this too.) I love that the author re-visited these characters to continue their story--I for one have thought about them since I finished If I Stay.


I also love that the lyrics to the songs Adam wrote while he was mourning his losses are included in the book. In fact, this was probably what I enjoyed most. It gives depth and authenticity to the storyline. And you can also see why Adam's band skyrocketed to such stardom; after all, everyone has "been there" suffering the loss (through death or a break-up) of a loved one, so the lyrics are universal and eternal.


Go get this book--you won't be sorry!

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This is the sequel to the book, If I Stay. I think you do need to read that book first in order to understand what is going on in this one. It was a great sequel and wonderful to find out where Adam and Mia ended up in their lives.

The whole book is told from Adam's point of view. He is living in Los Angelos as the front man for Shooting Stars, which has now gone double platinum with their first album and is hugely popular. Meanwhile Mia is out in New York City pursuing her degree at Juliard. Adam's life has been shattered by Mia's abscence and as he dodges paparazzi and tries to have some semblence of a normal life he is left grasping at straws. Then one night while in New York he stumbles across one of Mia's performances and decides to go watch her. Will this one night finally give Mia and Adam some closure on all of the events that happened during the first book, If I Stay?

This was a wonderful book. Forman does an excellent job of dumping you right into the main charater's head so that you are absolutely tied up their emotions and thoughts. It was wonderful to see things from Adam's perspective and to see how he was having to re-evalute his lifestyle. The majority of the book is told in present day, but portions of the book go back to times while Mia was recovering from her surgery or times after Mia went to New York City.

The book is heart-rending, but not as heart-rending as the first one. I think I only found myself in tears once in this one :-) I thought the characters acted more realistic than they did in the first book, they weren't so perfect. The book is hard to put down and really propelled by the continuous question, why did Mia leave?

This book tackles a lot of serious issues, although I didn't feel they were quite as serious and deep as the issues covered in If I Stay. Adam struggles with his fame; he can never get any privacy and he always feels alone even though there are tons of people around him.

The books ends fantastically and realistically. I think readers will be pleased. I really liked where it ended, but find myself hoping just a little bit that we can read more about Adam and Mia in the future.

Overall an excellent sequel to If I Stay. Readers who loved, If I Stay, need to check this out. You get to find out what happens to Mia and Adam and how the events of If I Stay color their lives afterwards.

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When we left Mia in If I Stay she was just waking up from a coma. Her parents and brother have been killed in a car accident and when her boyfriend Adam begs her to stay she decided not to join them but continue living. When this book opens it is three years later and we find that she left for Julliard several months after the accident. She didn't just leave Oregon behind, she left Adam.

"She kissed me good-bye. She told me that she loved me more than life itself. Then she stepped through security. She never came back."

Now he is a famous rock star but his life is a mess because he has never gotten over the loss of Mia. He doesn't know why she left him, or what she is doing now. The book explores the events that have happened in the last three years, in flashbacks just like we reviewed Mia's life in the first book. Why did Mia leave and is there any hope for their love to be renewed?

When I started to read the book I was surprised to find that it was in Adam's voice. At first I didn't like it but I soon realized that it was a genius move by the author to explore life from his point of view. Very few novels view a love story from the male side and I found it very refreshing. The prose is beautiful and the story is emotionally powerful. Forman has created some very compelling characters here, people who have real life flaws and problems. There is no glossing over the problems Adam has experienced since Mia walked out of his life. And the message that fame and fortune are not always the answer was impressive. Flawed though he may be I found myself hoping that things would work out for Adam. The flow of events was very realistic and touching and having worked with people experiencing grief it was clear the author did her research on this subject. The book is a wonderful example of how love can destroy, heal and help overcome life's obstacles. Fans of the first book will find a satisfying sequel, I liked it better than the first book. If you have not read the first book you can pick up this one and still enjoy the it. I highly recommend this one.

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I cant even remember where or when I heard about Gayle Formans Where She Went. It is the sequel to If I Stay, which seems to have been a pretty important book, given the way people talk about it.

If I Stay wasnt Rock Fiction. Or it didnt seem to be from its description. But Where She Went? Lets see: Adam Wilde is a rock star and Mia is a rising star on the cello.
While I call the genre Rock Fiction, I never insisted that every musical angle be rock and roll. Its just got to be about music. And lets face it: Rock Fiction sounds way better than Music Fiction. That makes this a double-header, right?

Not so fast. First, lets talk about the story. Adam is our leading man. When the book opens, hes wallowing in some sort of pity party and grief all rolled up into one pathetic, medicated package of angst and cliché. He is all but impossible to like.

Then, on a self-destruction escapade, he runs into Mia. Wow, what a coincidence! And she invites him back into her life even though shed walked out on him years before. Nevermind that it was part of some sick promise hed made without really meaning it and has never been able to get past.

And what do you know, but shes headed out on a farewell tour of all her private haunts around New York, so she brings Adam along. Its like someone flips a switch of his Xanax has finally kicked in because he is suddenly bearable.

I wanted to stop and ask him if he was serious. All this over a girl?

Yup. His entire world revolves around Mia. Her life revolves around herself and her need to escape her past. Which, of course, includes Adam. And, of course, cant be run away from.

Definitely not a plotline that Im excited to explore. The Adam in the beginning almost made me put the book down theres little I hate more than pathetic characters, and Adam is the most pathetic Ive seen in a long time. But Mia? I didnt like her, either. She dominates, dragging Adam around the city but still keeping her secrets, like they are the only glue holding them together. She comes off as controlling and manipulative, but everyone around her acts like shes more fragile than a robins egg.

Okay, so I dont have to like a book to be able to view it as Rock Fiction. This book is Rock Fiction from the get-go. Part of Adams misery has pushed him to the point where he is ready to quit his band. He hates them, and it seems like they hate him back. But, of course, hes the sole reason for their success, so theyre all stuck with each other. Except that Adam stays in a separate hotel and travels separately, but theyre all bothered by the fact that interviewers want only Adam and not anyone else in the band. How they all missed the fact that the media fixates on one member of a bandusually the frontmanand why their publicist didnt prep them, or why the band didnt choose another spokesman it makes no sense. Its a plot device, not something terribly realistic. Not to mention the interviewer who refuses to respect the rules. Hello? Think shed have a job after word of that got out? Assuming she got past the first question and some security dude or band employee didnt escort her out from the get-go.

Even though the book is about Adam and his relationship with his band in the early pages, its not until late in the book that this feels like Rock Fiction, even though we see glimpses of Adams rock and roll lifestyle all along. It just doesnt ring true. The bands success is too fast, too meteoric, too easy, but at the same time, theres the usual fictional contradiction of the really recognizable rocker who walks around New York City without a bodyguard, and the few people who do recognize Adam keep their distance.

What about Mia, the cellist? Theres no music in her, or very little even though were told the opposite. While we may see the musical side of Mia onstage, as soon as she puts her bow down, shes just another prima donna with an overly inflated sense of self, even if that sense of self is projected onto her.

Overall, this wasnt my favorite. Far from it. This is more of a book about angst and love and connecting and being down than it is Rock Fiction, even though music seems to be such a strong factor shaping the characters. It never stops seeming like a strong factor. It never crosses the line into being.

On to the next.

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I was actually very happy with how If I Stay ended. When I heard that Gayle Forman was coming out with a sequel to If I Stay, however, I was curious to see how it would turn out in Gayles talented hands. Turns out, its as good as it gets.

At first, Adam seems like a rather unlikable character. In many ways, he acts like a spoiled, ungrateful brat, being nasty to people and taking the whole I was dumped by my girlfriend thing too far to be sympathetic to. However, he is easy to sympathize with. A romantic situation that couldve easily been melodramatic is meticulously revealed to us in small, emotional bits, filling in the three years between the car crash and the present day. Everything in this book just progresses effortlessly: we can pretty much believe that these are two real people whose lives are simply being recorded down in this book.

In Adam and Mias story, we see the emotional complexity that goes into a relationship rife with tragedy and change. Why do people act the way they do? How can what one person does or thinks about their relationship seem so irrational to their partner? WHERE SHE WENT is the best book Ive read that explores these subtleties. Its deep, and yet its not preachy, or so deep as to be unrelatable.

WHERE SHE WENT is, simply put, so, so good. Its beautiful without being over the top, memorable without being unrealistic. If you read and loved If I Stay, then this sequel is an absolute must-read, if simply for the fact that you will get more of Adam and Mia. And if you havent read If I Stay yet, I think I will have to come after you and bug you until you do.

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This sequel picks up 3 years later and is told by Adam. In the first part of the book, you still don't know "where she went". This one is not as moving or emotionally wrenching as the first, but it is a good follow up that ends well. I enjoyed it.

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Reviewed by Sally Kruger aka "Readingjunky" for TeensReadToo.com

About three years ago, Mia and Adam went their separate ways - Mia off to Julliard and Adam off to live the life of a rock star.

Adam is about to start a European tour with Shooting Star. Since heading off on his own, he has attempted to push aside the emotions he still feels for Mia. Doing so has created a whole new set of problems. Adam is becoming cut off from his fellow band members, and the resulting pressure is becoming more than he can take. His days are filled with annoying interviews, meetings, and rehearsals that he only manages to get through with the help of prescription drugs and cigarettes. His equally famous girlfriend constantly berates him about living with a ghost from his past.

In New York City for a brief interview before leaving for the tour, Adam has an angry outburst due to questions from a nosy interviewer. Knowing he won't be popular, he takes off, avoiding his flight and, hopefully, the anger of his manager. His thoughts are filled with Mia, and when he stumbles across her name on the marquee for a Youth Concert series, he asks if any tickets remain. Fate intervenes and he finds himself sitting in the concert hall watching her perform.

After the concert he plans to slink back to his hotel and attempt to make up for his earlier bad behavior by contacting his manager. But on his way out of the concert hall, Adam is approached by an usher, asking him to follow him to Mia's dressing room.

What follows is a twenty-four-hour period of emotional ups and downs as both Adam and Mia confront the demons surrounding their complicated relationship. Adam relives the terrible months of watching Mia struggle to recover from the accident that killed her parents and her little brother. He knows he is the reason why Mia left. He had prayed for her recovery and promised he would let her go if that was what she wanted. For three lonely years, he has lived with the fact that that must have been her desire.

Can Adam and Mia forgive each other and themselves before each must leave to fulfill separate responsibilities on opposite sides of the world?

Author Gayle Forman takes readers back into the lives of Mia and Adam in her sequel to IF I STAY. With the focus more on Adam and his heartbreak both during and after Mia's family tragedy, Forman broadens the heartbreaking story in an emotional yet realistic direction. She explores the impact of death and separation as two people strive to overcome pain and connect with futures that satisfy them both.

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