Where She Went

This is the sequel to Forman’s hugely successful (at least in the States) If I Stay, the story of teenager Mia Hall in a coma, deciding whether to choose life. And, from this next book, we learn that the lives that she and her boy friend Adam have chosen have turned out in some ways rather well. Adam is now a disillusioned, moody rock star; his band’s epoch making album based on the emotional devastation caused by his break up with Mia. She is a rising classical music star. After years of being out of touch but still in each other’s minds, they meet when he goes to her concert at Carnegie Hall. They spend the night and early morning going to ordinary places and doing ordinary things in New York, rake over the ashes of their love and rekindle it. So far, so predictable: but this is just the glossy packaging for an engrossing journey, switching back and forth in time and between Adam and Mia, through the emotional tangles of a relationship complicated by tragedy and the misunderstandings, resentments, jealousies, betrayals, unlooked-for sacrifices, and the rest of the baggage that every relationship can carry with it. Forman writes with conviction; and, if the milieu is glamorous, it is believable, even down to the calluses on Mia’s cello playing fingers. These are two extraordinarily talented and successful young people, as screwed-up as the rest of us. It could be a winning combination with young readers.