If I Stay

Before this book, I didn't read. Children's books aside, it was the first one of my life, and that's why it carries a weight the score alone doesn't show.

The story of Mia, a girl who plays the cello and who, after a car accident with her family, hangs between life and death, watching everything from outside her own body, hooked me in a way I didn't expect. Suddenly I was turning pages to find out whether she would choose to stay. The question driving the book is simple and heavy: is it worth going on when what you love most has been lost?

I liked it so much that I watched the film, bought the DVD and still have it. It was also because of this book that I went looking for the sequel.