"Quitting's not hard. Deciding to quit is hard. Once you make that mental leap, the rest is easy." (Mia Hall)
Where She Went is the sequel to If I Stay and is told from Adam's POV. I enjoyed the sequel much more than the first book. If I Stay was about loss, grief and sacrifice. It was about a girl struggling to survive after her entire family died in a car crash. However, Where She Went, a book about a celebrity with a broken heart and a lot of issues connected with me more.
This book is told from Adam's POV. He was the sweet, dependable perfect boyfriend who loved Mia deeply. However in this books, the Adam from If I Stay has been replaced by a chain-smoking, paranoid, anxious, broken and lonely celebrity who lashes at others. Mia dumped Adam three years ago and Adam has no idea why. I really wanted to know what made Adam become the person he was. What happened to him?!
From the outside, it seems that Adam has the life that anyone would be jealous of. He is a successful member in the Shooting Stars band and is living the dream. His band has won Grammy's, toured worldwide and is top on the iTunes charts. He has an actress for a girlfriend and everything in the palm of his hand. His life is supposed to be easy, but it is far from that. In fact, it is his celebrity status that makes Adam's life worse. Gayle Forman clearly showed the difficulty and stress that living under the public eye involves. Adam's whole entire life, his past and future, is put under the public eye for every Tom, Dick and Harry to scrutinize and it makes his life miserable.
However, it was Adam's "voice" that put me on the fence. Gayle Forman wrote convincingly about 21 year old broken guy, but I found Adam to be too angsty, whiny and irrational sometimes. His "voice" was convincing, fascinating and painful, but it was also a little annoying at times.
"Whoever said the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out. This whole night has been a mistake. It's not going to let me rewind. Or unmake the mistakes I made. Or the promises I've made. Or have her back. Or have me back." (Adam Wilde)
While the romance between Mia and Adam did play a central role in Where She Went, it never overshadowed the message of this book. I was never invested in Mia and Adam's relationship. Their relationship was too perfect and I was always unable to believe it, because I never "saw" it (the better word is read about it). Where She Went didn't even make Adam and Mia a shippable couple that I believed in. They were never shippable or believable as a romantic couple.
Where She Went is about heartbreak, pain, loss, grief, moving on, making mistakes, growing up and living life. It's about seizing the moment and finding yourself. If I Stay was about loss and sacrifice, but Where She Went was about life and living it.