If I Stay

This book is compared to Alice Sebold’s novel “The Lovely Bones,” by unanimous critical opinion the most astonishing bestseller of the early 21st century. Although they share only the basic premise: here as there, the soul of a young girl, parted from the body, observes the lives of loved ones from the outside. But in the case of the heroine of Gayle Forman’s book, seventeen-year-old Mia, things are much more complicated. Fate has confronted her with a choice — either return to life, or leave forever for the next world, following the people she loved most.