Review: Where She Went, Gayle Forman

Where She Went


Gayle Forman

Doubleday, 2011

It's been three years since Mia walked out of Adam's life. And three years he's spent wondering why.


When their paths cross again in New York City, Adam and Mia are brought back together for one life-changing night.


Adam finally has the opportunity to ask Mia the questions that have been haunting him. But will a few hours in this magical city be enough to lay their past to rest, for good - or can you really have a second chance at first love?


Where She Went is the sequel to If I Stay, a book less than a month ago. It picks up three years after the last book ends, this time told from the point of view of Adam, whose band has achieved a phenomenal amount of success, at much personal expense. Mia, meanwhile, is on the brink of her own big break. A chance meeting between the two breaks three years of silence, and I honestly wasn't sure which way this was going to go. I felt the same about If I Stay, incidentally: Forman is good at not tipping her hand too soon, and this book had me hooked until the end.

Adam is an interesting character, and seeing things through his eyes gave a new perspective on the events of the previous book. His own spiralling breakdown gives Where She Went its backbone, and it is Mia that has the power to fix things this time around.

Having recently read Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, I was slightly sceptical of the whole one-magic-night-in-New-York thing, but it was less hipster cool and more incidental to Mia and Adam's gradual opening up to each other again. The ending comes fast, but Adam and Mia's relationship is explored and constructed in such a way that it is more believable that it could have been in the wrong hands.

A lot of the supporting characters blur into the background, and as a reader I sometimes wanted more than snippets of them, but in the end this is Adam and Mia's story. There is a hard edge of reality to it, which I appreciated: this is less a romance, and more a genuine love story.

Overall rating: 8/10


Book source: Borrowed from the library.