Book Review: Where She Went (If I Stay, #2) ♥

♥Synopsis*:
It's been three years since the devastating accident . . . three years since Mia walked out of Adam's life forever.

Now living on opposite coasts, Mia is Juilliard's rising star and Adam is LA tabloid fodder, thanks to his new rock star status and celebrity girlfriend. When Adam gets stuck in New York by himself, chance brings the couple together again, for one last night. As they explore the city that has become Mia's home, Adam and Mia revisit the past and open their hearts to the future-and each other.

Told from Adam's point of view in the spare, lyrical prose that defined If I Stay, Where She Went explores the devastation of grief, the promise of new hope, and the flame of rekindled romance.
*Copied and pasted from Goodreads. 

Title of Book: Where She Went
Author of Book: Gayle Forman
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Date of Publication: 5 April 2011
Number of Pages: 264

My Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥
Who I'd Recommend it To: fans of the first book in the series, though I liked this one better.

If I had to choose one word to describe this book, it would be beautiful. 

It was a beautiful story. Romantic, clever, and flawless.  It's the perfect follow-up to the first novel, which left the reader clueless and open-ended.  This book filled in all the gaps, while at the same time left you feeling hungry and wanting to tear apart this book to get the answers to life lessons.  Or, that's the way I felt.  It was lovely.  It was a lovely feeling. I love books like that-- Where you feel as if you could find some really important life lesson inside its pages if you searched long and hard for it. 

On page 222, towards the end of the book, Adam says, "Closure. I loathe that word."  It felt like Forman had sort of spoken to me there for a minute.  Here's why.  When my aunt died, my grandmother always complained about people saying that she needed to find "closure". Her response to that was always, "Screw closure. I'm not going to find closure because my daughter died." When she herself died, a few years later, my mom said the same about her. "Closure doesn't exist," my mom often still says.  "I'm never going to get over my mother's death."  Adam also says, "Shrinks love [closure]."  And it seems like therapists do really enjoy throwing out the term "closure", but the word is inaccurate. There's no such thing as closure. 

All through the time when I was reading a book, a few songs were running through my head.  One of them was "The Lucky One" by Taylor Swift. If you haven't heard the song, I suggest you listen to it while you read the rest of the review.  If you have heard it, you know that the tone of it is slightly sarcastic, even angry-sounding at times.  The line, "...and your secrets end up splashed on the news front page" seems to really describe Adam.  Adam is portrayed as a very angry person, broken and anguished from losing Mia.  Also, the line, "...took your money and your dignity and got the hell out" seems to describe this book in general. And the line from "Begin Again" where Taylor Swift sings, "...thinking all love ever does is break and burn and end" kept running through my mind each time I read the book.  I guess it's kind of funny that this book is sort of about music and songs, and I had these songs run through my mind.  A book hasn't ever made me think of a song before, but I think that's kind of a cool idea and might start to add some song references to my reviews from now on. 

If I had to choose my favorite character from the book, it would be Kim.  I know she wasn't in the book  very much, but something about her character seemed really important, like she was holding the story together.  She was sort of like the strand holding Adam and Mia together, even when they were apart and broken up.  I loved the part when Mia told Adam how Kim had ended up--as a photographer.  She turned into a rebellious, badass, successful person, which made me super happy.  Yay for Kim! 

The other things I liked about this book were its title and its cover.  The title "Where She Went" can be interpreted in so many ways.  I interpret it as Adam trying to find where Mia went those 3 years when they didn't speak.  In the book, he finds out where her life has gone, and where she went emotionally. I'm assuming the girl on the cover is Mia.  The girl's a perfect depiction of Mia.  She seems to have dead-looking eyes, but she's gazing somewhere that we can't see, so it must mean that something dead in her is coming alive. 

Anyway, I know that was a lot of thoughts for one book, but this book gave me a lot to think about.  I had to write down all of my thoughts for this review so I wouldn't forget them all.  This was certainly a mind-blowing book.  I hope that everyone will read it at some point! Two thumbs up for a marvelous, heart-breaking series. ♥♥