Review: Where She Went

Title: Where She Went (If I Stay #2)
Author: Gayle Foreman
Publisher: Dutton
Publication Date: November 4th, 2012
Genre: YA, Contemporary

If you haven't yet read If I Stay, this review will contain some spoilers.

Three years have passed since the day of the fatal car crash that took Mia’s family from her. Adam and Mia are both successful musicians, but their lives are completely separate from one another. Adam hasn’t seen Mia since she left Oregon to attend Julliard, and he is now the famous lead singer of his band Shooting Star. He is also half of a celebrity couple, and that means he can’t seem to go anywhere without catching the interest of the paparazzi. When Adam has twenty-four hours to spend by himself in New York City, he finds himself going to a concert Mia is performing in. A prodigy on the cello, Mia graduated from Julliard in three years and is now going to tour through Japan. When they meet up after the performance, Mia takes Adam on a late night tour through New York City before they both leave the next day. Is there too much time and pain between them, or could there be a reprise in store for Adam and Mia?

After finishing Where She Went, I feel like I have a heart of stone. Was I the only one that didn’t find this book half as emotional as If I Stay? Told from the point of view of Adam, this book takes place after the events of If I Stay, when Mia and Adam are both successful twenty-one year olds. Although it has a different narrator, Where She Went is told in a similar structure as If I Stay. The central plot line takes place in a one-day period, while flashbacks are shown throughout. This didn’t work quite as well as it did in If I Stay, since there wasn’t as much tension. Despite this, it still managed to flow well and not drag on too much, which you might expect since not a lot happens. This book was mainly character driven and focused a lot on grief and Adam and Mia’s relationship. While I loved both of their characters in If I Stay, it was sad to see the bitter and unhappy person Adam has become. While I still liked Mia, I couldn’t get past what she did to Adam. I understood why she broke up him, but I just hated how she did it. All the same, it was great to see that Mia was able to move on, although of course she never forgot her family. I will say that Mia and Adam seemed much older than twenty-one, both in their success and the way they acted. I might just be saying that because I’m twenty-one, though. There were two things that this book should have had more of: Kim and music. Neither were mentioned as much in this book as they were in the first, although I did enjoy the reference to the song “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens. While it didn’t match If I Stay (and how could it, really?) I liked the premise and Mia’s tour of New York. This book addresses Adam’s promise to Mia and the repercussions of that. The writing was just as good as in If I Stay, and fans will definitely want to check out this sequel about grief and picking up the pieces after a tragedy.

3/5

“You were so busy trying to be my savior that you left me all alone.”