If I Stay

If I Stay

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

The critically acclaimed, bestselling novel from Gayle Forman, author of Where She Went, Just One Day, and Just One Year. Soon to be a major motion picture, starring Chloe Moretz! In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen ­year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, this will change the way you look at life, love, and family. Now a major motion picture starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Mia's story will stay with you for a long, long time.
Read online
  • 9 706
Where She Went

Where She Went

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

The highly anticipated sequel to the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed *If I Stay* Picking up several years after the dramatic conclusion of If I Stay, Where She Went continues the story of Adam and Mia, from Adam's point of view. Ever since Mia's decision to stay - but not with him - Adam's career has been on a wonderful trajectory. His album, borne from the anguish and pain of their breakup, has made him a bona fide star. And Mia herself has become a top-rate cellist, playing in some of the finest venues in the world. When their respective paths put them both in New York City at the same time, the result is a single night in which the two reunite - with wholly satisfying results. And don't miss Gayle's newest novel, JUST ONE DAY and the forthcoming companion, JUST ONE YEAR. **Amazon.com Review Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2011: In the three years since the tragic accident Mia barely survived in If I Stay, she and high school ex-boyfriend Adam have lived separate lives on opposite coasts. But then Adam, now the dissatisfied front man of popular LA-based band Collateral Damage, stops over in New York City for one night before kicking off the European leg of his tour. It happens to be the same evening that Mia, now well on her way to becoming a renowned cellist, is performing at Carnegie Hall. Adam buys a ticket, planning to slip in and out, but Mia spots him and for the first time in years they’re face-to-face with each other and their shared past. Over the course of one evening, as Adam and Mia traverse the city’s streets, they relive the four days Mia spent in the intensive care unit as well as her departure to Juilliard and from the life she knew. Emotionally raw and incredibly moving, Gayle Forman again showcases her considerable talent for drawing complex characters who face impossible decisions and then bear the consequences. Equally as compelling as If I Stay, Where She Went is powerful, heartbreaking, and everything fans of Mia, Adam, and Forman could hope for. --Jessica Schein Lauren Oliver and Gayle Forman: Author One-on-One Lauren Oliver is the author of Delirium and Before I Fall. A graduate of the University of Chicago and the MFA program at New York University, Lauren is a full-time writer and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Recently she sat down with Gayle Forman to discuss their work. Read the resulting interview below, or turn the tables to see what happened when Gayle interviewed Lauren. From Lauren Oliver: I’ve had a writer’s crush on Gayle Forman ever since I read an early copy of If I Stay. It’s a shattering and ultimately life-affirming book, and I was completely transported by the lyricism of Gayle’s prose. Like the music it often references, her writing seems to float gracefully over and around its themes of life and choice and love—always love. We’ve been trying to grab coffee in our neighborhood for over a year (and have even run into each other on the street outside the local grocery store). Finally, on the eve of the publication of Where She Went (April 5, 2011), the gorgeous follow-up to If I Stay, we found time to grab lunch and gab. Lauren: Had you always intended to write a sequel to If I Stay? Gayle: No. I had no intention of writing a sequel, in fact. But in the way that characters sometimes behave, Adam and Mia had different ideas. I’d started on a totally different book, actually, but they kept banging on the drum in my head. And I felt I had left them in a difficult place. At the end of If I Stay, I knew they both they had a rough couple of years ahead of them. Lauren: How hard was it to switch POV and enter Adam’s mind? To write from a boy’s perspective? Gayle: It wasn’t very hard, actually. I knew the characters so well. I knew him so well. It was actually strange to know a character so well without actually having seen through his eyes. But in some ways, I could understand Adam even more than I could understand Mia when I started writing her. Mia was so different from me. One thing that was hard: Adam was so angry at Mia, and so I was angry at Mia, and that was disconcerting. Lauren: Is there transference of emotions when you write? Do you feel you become your characters in some way? Gayle: Totally. I let my sister read a draft of Where She Went and she said, “I forgive you for being such a brat.” Because I’d been totally channeling that anger. If I Stay actually was kind of a beautiful place to be, because Mia was surrounded by so much love. Where She Went was a lot harder, even though nobody dies. Lauren: So Mia is quite different from you, then? Gayle: Completely. When I first started writing her, and even though she inhabited me, I was like, where are you coming from? I feel like when I talk, I sound like a teenage valley girl. She seems so wise to me, like such an old soul. I certainly can see elements of me, but she definitely feels quite different and other. But I loved her and felt very protective of her and I knew her very well. Lauren: How did you know that so much time would have to elapse between books? Gayle: I just knew that it had to be several years later. The same that I knew that it couldn’t be from Mia’s perspective. If we were in Mia’s head again it would be another exploration of her grief. And it had to be several years later for Adam and Mia to be ready for change. Lauren: What’s your writing process? Gayle: My process is sort of similar to yours. I don’t start by writing the ending of the books, but I know what the ending will be. Although with If I Stay, I didn’t know what Mia’s choice would be, though I knew the book would end by her choosing. I totally get ideas in the shower too! I’m a firm believer that the muse visits when you are working—sitting at the computer—but the moments when things have clicked have so often been in the shower. And then I’ll be sitting at my computer in a towel, and my apartment is freezing. We don’t have one of those hot New York apartments. I should really invest in a bathrobe. Lauren: But you don’t outline? Gayle: I do not outline. I love exploring the twists and turns to get me to that ending, the unexpected places. Lauren: I really love what you said about the muse visiting when you are working. So you’re pretty much always working on a book? Gayle: Yes. Momentum breeds momentum and inertia breeds inertia. Even if something’s not working, I’ll keep working, just to have something to work on, if that makes sense. And sometimes one failed project leads to another project that works. But you can’t get to 60 mph from a full stop. It never happens that something springs to life from nothing. Lauren: Music is so important in both If I Stay and Where She Went. So it begs the question: do you listen to music when you write? Gayle: When I wrote If I Stay, I listened to music the whole time…There was this one song, Falling Slowly, which I listened to every time I began writing. It was a Pavlovian thing. I’d listen to it, it would make me cry, and then I would start working. I wrote Where She Went in dead silence until about 3/4 of the way through. The switch coincided with a point at which Adam stops being estranged from music. He borrows an ipod and after that moment, I started listening to music again while I was writing. Lauren: What are the themes that interest you as a writer? Gayle: Love, I think, in all of its dimensions. The cost of unconditional love…what happens in the absence of love. Love is what we all live and breathe for. Lauren: What was the proportion of fiction versus real life in If I Stay? What about Where She Went? I know that If I Stay was actually based off a real-life event. Gayle: In If I Stay some of the characters were based on people I knew and the premise was based on a real-life event. Where She Went passed fully into the realm of fiction. There’s a certain transcendence in the aftermath of tragedy…you find something deeper in yourself. But eventually all that passes, and you have to simply get on with it. That was the germ of reality in Where She Went. The gritty reality of grieving and getting on with life. Lauren: What’s the best and worst part about publishing a follow-up novel to a super successful book? Gayle: I worry about letting people down, of course. But mostly, I put the pressure on myself. I want every book to be better than the one before. Lauren: What about the best? Gayle: I’m just so glad that we write YA because we have such a broad and vocal readership. Review "[A] gorgeous portrayal of rejection and rekindled love." - USA Today "Forman follows up her bestselling "If I Stay" with a story that is equally if not more powerful . . . " - Publishers Weekly, starred review
Read online
  • 6 704
Just One Day

Just One Day

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

From the New York Times bestselling author of If I StayAllyson Healey's life is exactly like her suitcase—packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything she’s not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform Allyson’s life. A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the “accidents” of fate, Just One Day shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost. . . and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know. The first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willem’s story—Just One Year—is coming soon!
Read online
  • 4 246
Just One Year

Just One Year

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

The compelling companion title to the much-lauded Just One Day follows Willem's transformative journey toward self-discovery and true love, by the author of If I Stay.Picking up where Just One Day ended, Just One Year tells Willem's side of the story. After spending an amazing day and night with Allyson in Paris that ends in separation, Willem and Allyson are both searching for one another. His story of their year of quiet longing and near misses is a perfect counterpoint to Allyson’s own as Willem undergoes a transformative journey, questioning his path, finding love, and ultimately, redefining himself.* “The complexity of Willem’s character, the twisting plot, and far-flung settings (including the Netherlands, Mexico, and India) create an alluring story that pushes beyond the realm of star-crossed romance.”— Publishers Weekly starred review “As much a travelogue as it is a romance, this novel will appeal to fans of the movie Before Sunrise or Maureen Johnson's 13 Little Blue Envelopes (HarperCollins, 2005).”—School Library Journal“As [Willem] becomes engaged personally and professionally, readers will find their interest quickening, right up to the satisfying denouement.”—Kirkus Reviews
Read online
  • 2 171
I Have Lost My Way

I Have Lost My Way

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

A powerful display of empathy and friendship from the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of If I Stay. Around the time that Freya loses her voice while recording her debut album, Harun is making plans to run away from home to find the boy that he loves, and Nathaniel is arriving in New York City after a family tragedy leaves him isolated on the outskirts of Washington state. After the three of them collide in Central Park, they slowly reveal the parts of their past that they haven't been able to confront, and together, they find their way back to who they're supposed to be. Told over the course of a single day from three different perspectives, Gayle Forman's newest novel about the power of friendship and being true to who you are is filled with the elegant prose that her fans have come to know and love.
Read online
  • 959
Sisters in Sanity

Sisters in Sanity

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

Have you ever had the out-of-control dream? The one where you know you're not crazy, but no one around you--not your parents, not your teachers, not even the authorities--will listen to you? For sixteen-year-old Brit Hemphill, the out-of-control dream comes true when her dad enrolls her at Red Rock, a bogus treatment center that claims to cure rebellious teen girls. At Red Rock, Brit is forced into therapy, and her only hope of getting her life back is in the hands of an underqualified staff of counselors. Brit's dad thinks Red Rock can save her, but the truth is it's doing more harm than good. No girl could survive Red Rock alone--but at a treatment center where you earn privileges for ratting out your peers, it's hard to know who you can trust. For Brit, everything changes when she meets V, Bebe, Martha, and Cassie, four girls who keep her from going over the edge. Together they'll hold on to their sanity and their sisterhood while trying to keep their Red Rock reality from becoming a full-on nightmare.
Read online
  • 809
I Was Here

I Was Here

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

Cody and Meg were inseparable. Two peas in a pod. Until . . . they weren’t anymore. When her best friend Meg drinks a bottle of industrial-strength cleaner alone in a motel room, Cody is understandably shocked and devastated. She and Meg shared everything—so how was there no warning? But when Cody travels to Meg’s college town to pack up the belongings left behind, she discovers that there’s a lot that Meg never told her. About her old roommates, the sort of people Cody never would have met in her dead-end small town in Washington. About Ben McAllister, the boy with a guitar and a sneer, who broke Meg’s heart. And about an encrypted computer file that Cody can’t open—until she does, and suddenly everything Cody thought she knew about her best friend’s death gets thrown into question. I Was Here is Gayle Forman at her finest, a taut, emotional, and ultimately redemptive story about redefining the meaning of family and finding a way to move forward even in the face of unspeakable loss.
Read online
  • 784
Leave Me

Leave Me

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

For every woman who has ever fantasized about driving past her exit on the highway instead of going home to make dinner, for every woman who has ever dreamed of boarding a train to a place where no one needs constant attention--meet Maribeth Klein. A harried working mother who's so busy taking care of her husband and twins, she doesn't even realize she's had a heart attack. Afterward, surprised to discover that her recuperation seems to be an imposition on those who rely on her, Maribeth does the unthinkable: She packs a bag and leaves. But, as is so often the case, once we get to where we're going, we see our lives from a different perspective. Far from the demands of family and career and with the help of liberating new friendships, Maribeth is finally able to own up to secrets she has been keeping from those she loves and from herself.
Read online
  • 660
We Are Inevitable

We Are Inevitable

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

"No one writes about love like Gayle Forman. Lose yourself in her passionate mash note to rock music, indie bookstores and best of all, the miracles that can happen when you take chances on other people." — E. LOCKHART, #1 New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars and Again AgainA poignant and uplifting novel about the power of community, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay.  Aaron Stein used to think books were miracles. But not anymore. Even though he spends his days working in his family's secondhand bookstore, the only book Aaron can bear to read is one about the demise of the dinosaurs. It's a predicament he understands all too well, now that his brother and mom are gone and his friends have deserted him, leaving Aaron and his shambolic father alone in a moldering bookstore in a crusty mountain town where no one seems to read anymore.So...
Read online
  • 617
Frankie & Bug

Frankie & Bug

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

In the debut middle grade novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman comes a poignant and powerful coming-of-age story that follows a young girl and her new friend as they learn about family, friendship, allyship, and finding your way in a complicated world.It's the summer of 1987, and all ten-year-old Bug wants to do is go to the beach with her older brother and hang out with the locals on the boardwalk. But Danny wants to be with his own friends, and Bug's mom is too busy, so Bug is stuck with their neighbor Philip's nephew, Frankie. Bug's not too excited about hanging out with a kid she's never met, but they soon find some common ground. And as the summer unfolds, they find themselves learning some important lessons about each other, and the world. Like what it means to be your true self and how to be a good ally for others. That family can be the people you're related to, but also the people you choose to have...
Read online
  • 563
Just One Night

Just One Night

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

Everything will happen in just one night . . . After spending one life-changing day in Paris with laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter, sheltered American good girl Allyson "Lulu" Healey discovered her new lover had disappeared without a trace. Just One Day followed Allyson's quest to reunite with Willem; Just One Year chronicled the pair's year apart from Willem's perspective. Now, back together at last, this delectable e-novella reveals the couple's final chapter.
Read online
  • 531
Not Nothing

Not Nothing

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

"The book we all need at the time we all need it." —Katherine Applegate, Newbery Award–winning author of The One and Only Ivan In this multigenerational middle grade novel of hope, compassion, and forgiveness from #1 New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman that is as timely as it is timeless, a boy who has been assigned to spend his summer volunteering at a senior living facility learns unexpected lessons that change the trajectory of his life.Alex is twelve, and he did something very, very bad. A judge sentences him to spend his summer volunteering at a retirement home where he's bossed around by an annoying and self-important do-gooder named Maya-Jade. He hasn't seen his mom in a year, his aunt and uncle don't want him, and Shady Glen's geriatric residents seem like zombies to him. Josey is 107 and ready for his life to be over. He has evaded death many times, having survived ghettos, dragnets, and a...
Read online
  • 471
Just One Day jod-1

Just One Day jod-1

Gayle Forman

Young Adult / Contemporary / Fiction

A breathtaking journey toward self-discovery and true love, from the author of If I Stay When sheltered American good girl Allyson "LuLu" Healey first meets laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter at an underground performance of Twelfth Night in England, there’s an undeniable spark. After just one day together, that spark bursts into a flame, or so it seems to Allyson, until the following morning, when she wakes up after a whirlwind day in Paris to discover that Willem has left. Over the next year, Allyson embarks on a journey to come to terms with the narrow confines of her life, and through Shakespeare, travel, and a quest for her almost-true-love, to break free of those confines. Just One Day is the first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willem’s story— Just One Year —is coming soon!
Read online
  • 62
216