Boring and Slow Like a Snail | If I Stay


If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Publisher: Speak
Release date: April 1st, 2010
Genres: YA, Contemporary, Romance
Pages:  261
Source: Bought it
Just listen, Adam says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel.

I open my eyes wide now.
I sit up as much as I can.
And I listen.

Stay, he says.


Choices. Seventeen-year-old Mia is faced with some tough ones: Stay true to her first love—music—even if it means losing her boyfriend and leaving her family and friends behind?

Then one February morning Mia goes for a drive with her family, and in an instant, everything changes. Suddenly, all the choices are gone, except one. And it's the only one that matters.

If I Stay is a heartachingly beautiful book about the power of love, the true meaning of family, and the choices we all make.
I don't know what to expect when I started reading If I Stay. I've watched the movie and it was kinda meh. I started reading the novel last year and I just stopped in the middle of it because I thought it was boring. Then, not long ago I saw the novel just sitting on my table and decided to give it a second chance. It turned out, I was quite right about putting it down in the first place because If I Stay isn't exactly my jar of cookies.

Why I didn't like If I Stay:

-The plot is boring. I don't know if there's even such thing as a plot in this book. Because it's literally just a bunch of past events written together here and there and the current events just kind of slipped into it or it's the other way around I'm not sure.

-It's said to be heartwrenchingly beautiful, but what I got from this book was just utter boredom. I really tried to like this book, seriously. But maybe it's just hard for me to feel sad when the main character didn't even cry when her parents died. Maybe all the what ifs and flashbacks are supposed to make me feel sad. But they failed.

-Mia is too dull for my liking. She's just an ordinary girl with ordinary thoughts and ordinary life with ordinary friends and schools. Whoop. I think I missed something. She's a cellist! Yay! But, um.. So what? Isn't that supposed to make her less dull? You know what? I don't think so. She also lacks human emotions. Throughout the scene where Mia just stood there looking at her dead parents' bodies, I was like 'why aren't you fucking crying? Aren't you sad? What the heck is wrong with you?'

-The book is too long. I felt like reading a 500 pages book because I saw there was no point in many of the paragraphs. I could've just read the first and last pages and still not miss out on anything.

-Some flashbacks are completely useless and meaningless. The book is basically made of flashbacks, so it's expected for some of them to be meaningless and useless to the story. When I was reading through some flashbacks, I was like, 'Who cares? I don't want to know anything about you getting into stupid summer camp that has nothing to do with the story or how you spend your day with your grandpa! GIVE ME SOMETHING INTERESTING!!'

-None of the characters grew on me. You have to empathize towards the characters first if you want to enjoy a book. But, I felt utterly nothing when her family died because I never really got the chance to get to know them that deep in the beginning. It's so out-of-nowhere and the author just didn't give me enough time to know the characters that well to feel sorry when they're dead. The flashbacks also had no effects on me whatsoever. I was just bored through the whole thing when she recounts her past events about the other characters blah blah blah.

-The ending is so unsatisfying. Okay. I watched the movie first. So I've seen it coming. But still. I expected something truly life-changing from the book that has got 132160 five stars rating on Goodreads. But, no. I felt nothing.

In all, I can say that I don't recommend this book for anyone. Because it will truly make you fall asleep in the first few pages just like it did with me last year. It did it again, though, when I was re-reading it to write this review. But, if you love books with flashbacks in between the plot and a super ordinary main character, maybe you should read this.

My rating:   

Reviewed by Inas 

2 comments

  1. I'm glad I was the only one who felt *meh* about both the book and the movie! Excellent review.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! And btw, did you mean 'I was NOT the only one'?
      because I'm a lil bit confused here haha

      Delete

Bonjour!
I'd be glad if you leave a comment here!
Say whatever you like! I don't bite!