Book Review l I Was Here

I Was Here
Gayle Foreman

Fiction / YA / Contemporary
6.5 Stars

Summary
How could your best friend be suicidal and not tell you? Cody has to come to terms with her best friends death, going to pack up her room at college seems like the last step, bringing the last few pieces of Meg home for closure, but is it really the first step in understanding?

I read, If I Stay and Where She Went, back when they where both incredibly popular and I liked them so when I saw this on the library shelf, I figured I would give it a try. I pretty much went into this blind. But considering I had only taken a peek at the dust jacket, I did jump to quite a few preconceived notions that where way off. That really threw off reading the book initially.

I went into this thinking it was going to be a little bit like Wintergirls, where both of the girls had issues and it was just a matter of luck that one died instead of the other. Which really was not the case, and then once we got into the story and I had figured out where my characters stood. I jumped to Watcher in the Wall and was thinking action, police, mystery stuff. Which was again, jumping to conclusions way to fast (and totally out of character for the author).

Foremans writing is very raw and emotional, it really taps into the age of the character. The thoughts the feelings its all very real. Personally I was a little bit annoyed by Cody, she came across as whiny sometimes, made incredibly bad judgement calls, and I felt like there was this emphasis on her family situation - where she has a less than perfect mother and she was supposed to be responsible for herself ect. - that didn't reflect in her actions. I also wasn't happy with the ending, while it had a genuine feel to it. It was a bit of a cop-out ending.

Contemporary is not one of my favourite genre's admittedly which probably plays into my opinion, and YA is not one of my stronger areas particularly lately. So grain of salt with all this.