Waiting on Wednesday: Where She Went by Gayle Forman

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine to feature upcoming titles you're looking forward to reading.

Where She Went by Gayle Forman

Publish Date: April 5, 2011

Pages: 258

Audience: YA

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. - taken from Goodreads


Let me start off first by saying that If I Stay was not a book that felt like it needed a sequel.  It could have stood on its own and no one would have balked. Having said that, however, this is the book I have pining to read the most in 2011. Every time there's an ARC giveaway, I jump on it.  Every time someone reviews  it on their blog, I am nuts with jealousy.

So if I don't think If I Stay even needed a sequel, why then am I so desperate to read it?  

Because If I Stay introduced me to a world and a set of characters that I wish I could know in real life.  I loved Mia and her family.  I loved Adam and Mia's relationship.  I loved that the characters in the story were intensely musical but not intensely competitive.  Music was a part of their family and their soul.  It wasn't just something to excel at. 

I am under no false pretenses that this story will be as magical as the first book.  Sequels are often disappointing that way.  But when you invest so much of your emotional memory to a book and a set of characters, you have a tendency to want to go back to see how life has been treating them since last we met.  I see Mia and Adam as real people.  I care about them.  I want to know how they're doing.