Title: Where She Went
Author: Gayle Forman [website] [twitter] [facebook]
Genre: Contemporary
Publisher: Dutton Children’s Books
Format: eBook
Source: Publisher (via Net Galley)
Parental Advisory: sex, drugs, alcohol, language, death
Teachable Moments: dealing with grief, promiscuity, drug & alcohol abuse

“That was my vow.  And it’s been my secret.  My burden.  My shame.  That I asked her to stay.  That she listened.  Because after I promised her what I promised her, and played her a Yo-Yo Ma cello piece, it had seemed as if she had heard.  She’d squeezed my hand and I’d thought it was going to be like in the movies, but all she’d done was squeeze.  And stayed unconscious.  But that squeeze had turned out to be her first voluntary muscle movement; it was followed by more squeezes, then by her eyes opening for a flutter or two, and then longer.  One of the nurses had explained that Mia’s brain was like a baby bird, trying to poke its way out of an eggshell, and that squeeze was the beginning of an emergence that went on for a few days until she woke up and asked for water.”

Summary (from the publisher):
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 Julliard’s rising star and Adam is LA tabloid fodder, thank 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.

Opinion:
I’m not quite sure I can find the words to appropriately express my love for this book.  Foreman has once again created a beautifully written story with great depth of emotion.

Set several years after Mia’s accident, Where She Went is told from Adam’s point of view.  It does touch lightly on some of his experiences at that time but is told primarily in the present as he struggles through the aftermath.  In choosing to speak in Adam’s voice this go around, Foreman has shown how fundamentally broken he is and how absolutely heartbreaking to be inside his head as he remembers the events of his past with Mia and how he’s travelled through life since.

Now a famous rockstar, and one half of a Hollywood super couple, Adam’s living what most would consider the dream.  Fame, fortune, and all the trappings of celebrity are what many musicians aspire to, only to Adam’s way of thinking he’s got nothing.  He makes music out of obligation and frustration.  Bares his soul in the hopes that one day he might finally feel right with the world.  Yet, with each passing day he realizes that he won’t, not without Mia and not with the way they parted company. This is the central focus of the story, how Adam is walking blindly through the motions of life.

It’s not lost on me (and eventually Mia) how very much Adam has lost in his life and Foreman goes to great lengths to provide a richly emotional experience for the reader as a way of explaining.  There was little in the way of laughter but boy, oh boy, was there more than a fare share of tears and angst.  In this case, those tears were more positively felt.  Though heart-wrenching, they were cathartic and coupled themselves with such expressions of loss and love that it would have been impossible for me to have felt nothing at all.

I admit, reluctantly, that Mia was not my favorite person in this story.  Through the first two-thirds I wanted to smack her around a bit.  Sure, I felt her pain — she’d been through so much — but egads I wanted to shake her and tell her to get her head out of her butt half the time.  But then, oh then….in the last third of the book events transpired and revelations were made that allowed my opinion of her to inch back towards the positive.

The plot of Where She Went was not all that unique but this was a story that was built on the foundation of it’s characters more than the events that transpired.  There were still remnants of the original catastrophe that took away Mia’s entire family and left her fighting for life but they were used mostly to facilitate the leisurely stroll down the hardest of memory lanes. No, this story was mostly about picking up the pieces after and how difficult it is to mend a broken heart.

Forman’s approach, by the way, is just how I liked it.  I didn’t need grand sweeping plot points filled with loads of action sequences.  It was the subtleties and nuances of each character and how they interacted with their surroundings and the people in their lives that made the whole of this work.

In short, I loved this book.  In fact, I enjoyed it more than it’s predecessor If I Stay.  It was at times an excruciatingly painful journey through love and loss but the trip came with a most fulfilling ending.