Review: Engaging and true
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 20, 2013
If I Stay by Evan Reeves is a beautiful, engaging story about friendship, love and life.The premise of this book is very appealing. Imagine meeting an exciting totally hot guy, hooking up, and then seeing them next in your class, only not as a fellow classmate but as your professor. That is harsh. But I would have expected more in the area of hiding their forbidden love, but even though they mention how wrong it is to be together, they don't have to hide it much, or at least it doesn't seem so. They appear to be very relaxed and uncaring in that area, and nobody seems to notice. So this story is not so much about the forbidden love between a college student and her professor, but mostly it is about friendship, love and life. How life changes and how to keep going and move on to the next stage of your life. It's also about growing up and about cherishing that which is important. The love scenes are very good and the book in general is really funny. The author really knows how to touch deep subjects but also be light, and that is actually how life should be. But I felt that in between some action was missing from time to time. Nevertheless, and even though I was expecting something else, I really enjoyed this book, and mostly the relationships in it.I liked the characters and especially the relationship between Gemma and her two best friends: Sacha and Brandon. It was very fun to see their dynamics which made them almost a family. They teased each other, and got into little fights, but were very supportive and took care of each other. My favorite was definitely Brandon. He was hilarious. I would love to have a friend like him, someone who always speaks his mind, and is really original, not afraid of being who he really is. I could totally relate to their anxiousness of finishing college and facing the unknown future of the rest of their lives. It is hard to make decisions regarding your future. I could also relate to Gemma and her broken heart. Breakups do suck, and it is not easy to get over them when the relationship has been that long and meaningful. So I did like these characters a lot! They were true. They were real. They could be your best friends. They could be anyone you know.The book still needs a little bit of editing; even in the re-edited edition I received I encounter some grammatical issues. I was able to go past them because I was engaged by the story, but readers who are pickier may be disturbed by this.*Note: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review, but my opinion was not biased in any way by this fact.