Review: Where She Went

Title: Where She Went
Series: If I Stay, #2
Author: Gayle Forman
Release Date: April 5, 2011
Publisher: Dutton
Cover Designer: N/A
Age Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary
Tagline: N/A
Summary: 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.

My Review:
I don’t know how Gayle Forman does it! She always comes up with such beautiful titles. “Where She Went”. Those three words sound like lyrics from a sad song, don’t they?

This book takes place three years after If I Stay. Like its predecessor, the actual book takes place over a very short time, a few days in this case, but there are many flashbacks. Except this time, we’re reading from Adam’s POV. I was happy to be reading about the characters that I came to love in If I Stay again (actually, one of them had changed so much that they weren't the character I knew and loved—but I'll get to that soon). When Adam first saw Mia again, I was so excited that it was almost like I was the one meeting my long-lost first love after three years apart!

However, I’m sorry to say that I didn’t like this book as much as the first one.
You see, one of the things I liked the most about If I Stay was that it wasn’t very emotional. But in Where She Went, Adam was no longer the sensitive, supporting boyfriend and all-around great guy that he was in If I Stay. He was an angsty, heart-broken rock star. Between his flashbacks of missing Mia and his accounts of how horrible life as a rock star is, there was so much emotional whining in this book. This is dislike is more of a personal thing than an actual problem with the book. I’m sure most people won’t mind that aspect, but I minded Adam’s melodrama very much.

I was very happy with the ending. At first Adam began saying things that made me worry, but it all turns out well in the end. I’m so glad that Mia and Adam’s suffering is over, and they can be happy now. I’m also glad that Mia helped Adam rediscover his love for music.

While I did like Where She Went, If I Stay was better. If you don’t mind lots of emotion and angst, you’ll probably like this book better than I did. But even if you do, you should still read this if you’ve read If I Stay and you want to see what happened next.

★★★