Tuesday, December 29, 2015

If I stay

This is the book I need to read for my school project. This is the book that I have to compare with the movie. This is: If I stay by Gayle Forman. I saw the film before I read the book and what I remember from the film is that it was very emotional and really captured every moment of the 'maybe end'. I really liked the movie so much! And it only gave me high expectations for the book.


Mia has a good life. She has a family that loves her and accepts her for who she is. She has a best friend that's always there for her and a boyfriend that supports her choices. She has her cello and her passion for music. That passion gives her many choices in life, choices she doesn't always know how to face. The biggest choice of them all? Stay true to her first love, music, even if it means losing her boyfriend and leaving her family and friends behind?
But all those choices are wiped away on a cold February morning and everything changes. Mia is only left behind with one choice. One that she never thought she'd have to face. One that's the hardest of all the choices she has had in her life. And it's the only one that matters.

Did the book meet my expectations? Not entirely. It might be because I'm reading the book for school and that I read too deep in it. It might be because the movie just left me speechless and nothing can add up to it. I don't know which factor has influenced my view on the book, but I just thought it was okay

The book shows, as always, a lot more of what's going on around the main character. If I stay uses a lot of flashbacks and that was something that I could appreciate. You only saw a little moment of Mia's present life so I was happy that her world around her started to build with every flashback I read. 

Did I like Mia? She was okay. I think that in the book she was a little bit more innocent in a way that she'd never fully enjoyed other things than music. That's how I really experienced it. She'd also always feel like an outsider to things. Feel like she didn't belong. In the beginning I liked to see her thoughts about it and see her deliberate what's right and wrong but towards the ending, I felt like it was an aspect that came a little too much at the surface of the book. And that made it for me a little bit less appealing. 

The movie showed a lot more of emotional aspects too. Every family member that was important and that we knew things about from the flashbacks came to her, talked to her, made her make her choice. In the book there are a lot of family members, I was happy about that. It shows that she has a lot of family that accepts her and supports her and even though she thinks she doesn't belong, she does. I do wished that some family members were explained, who they were, in what way they were important to her. I missed that in the book.

I did love all the parts where Adam, her boyfriend, came in. Although in the movie I felt like he had more emotions that he showed, this book held back his emotions. I think in the book he was a more closed person than in the movie, but there's nothing wrong with that. They're very opposite of each other. Adam is punk, Mia is classic and I was fond that their difference was showed but nevertheless they still supported each other. So I was very eager to the parts with Adam.

As for her best friend, Kim, I liked Kim more in the movie. Here she was kind of the same as Adam, she held things back. When Mia described Kim, I could really visualize how she looked but it also made me feel like she was very introvert. In the movie she's a little more open which in my opinion was better. But I am of the opinion that we knew Kim better than in the movie, which is something good for me. We knew her religion, we knew her relationship with her mother, more about her hobbies. So it was nice to get to know her for 'real'

Even though Mia used the flashbacks and the people around her to make her choice, the book didn't make me feel as much as the movie did. I really thought it'd bring up so many feels but it actually didn't which I found very disappointing. But as I said it might be because I saw the movie first, it might be because I read the book for school. I tend to dislike more books or think they're just 'okay' when it's for school. That's why I rely more on the comparison with the movie in this review. I gave it a 3.5 stars on Goodreads but I don't know if I'll really recommend it. I also won't read the second part in this series. 

“Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.” 



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