“Sometimes, you make choices in life.
And sometimes, choices make you.”

After watching Forman’s novel come to life, I was overcome by both extreme sadness that the film was over, and complete ecstasy that the film was exactly how I envisioned it to be.

Mia, a girl with her whole life ahead of her, suddenly finds herself in a coma after a fatal car accident which took the lives of her parents and younger brother, Teddy. The novel, and the film, takes us through a series of flashbacks into Mia’s life and memorable moments which predominately surround her love interest, Adam. The reader is left right up until the end of the story to find out whether or not Mia survives the crash, and the journey from start to end is both tragically endearing and overwhelmingly exhilarating with a few life lessons along the way.

The character of Adam is strangely and seductively compelling, played exquisitely by Jamie Blackley, and represents the conflicts of love and morality thrown into question when someone we love is almost lost to us. I fell in love with his character from the moment Forman introduced us to him; a leather jacket-wearing rockstar who wears his heart on his sleeve and falls for the girl who remained invisible to all but him. Boys wanted to be him. Girls wanted to be on him. Right up until the very end of the story, Adam, and Blackley, did not disappoint.

Chloë Grace Moretz was brilliantly casted to play Mia Hall. She conveyed every emotion I felt whilst reading the novel, and I don’t think anyone else could have captured the essence of Mia Hall the way Moretz did.

I find that the music complimented the film perfectly, too. Very well chosen in accordance with the novel.

I cannot express how amazing it feels to read a book, fall in love with it, then see it on a screen exactly the way you imagined it would be.

So thank you, Gayle Forman, for manipulating me into thinking that true love exists in the form of a rocker, and to the cast of If I Stay, for bringing my imagination to life.