Review: I Was Here by Gayle Forman
SYNOPSIS:
Cody and Meg were inseparable.
Two peas in a pod.
Until . . . they weren’t anymore.
When her best friend Meg drinks a bottle of industrial-strength cleaner alone in a motel room, Cody is understandably shocked and devastated. She and Meg shared everything—so how was there no warning? But when Cody travels to Meg’s college town to pack up the belongings left behind, she discovers that there’s a lot that Meg never told her. About her old roommates, the sort of people Cody never would have met in her dead-end small town in Washington. About Ben McAllister, the boy with a guitar and a sneer, who broke Meg’s heart. And about an encrypted computer file that Cody can’t open—until she does, and suddenly everything Cody thought she knew about her best friend’s death gets thrown into question.
I Was Here is Gayle Forman at her finest, a taut, emotional, and ultimately redemptive story about redefining the meaning of family and finding a way to move forward even in the face of unspeakable loss.
REVIEW:
This book wasn’t an emotional moving or gutting book but it was a quick, enjoyable read. It was easy to get lost in the characters and lost in the fictional world that Gayle creates. I find the story and the characters to be relate-able, but that might also be because I was in a Cody and Meg friendship and while my friend didn’t commit suicide, she is practically dead to me. So I relate to Cody on the falling apart and growing away from your childhood best friend.
You can really feel the raw emotions of the characters, I think that this is something that Gayle excels at as an author. I also enjoyed the complexity and richness of the characters and the story. The characters are multi-layered and multi-dimensioned, once you think you have someone figured out…another layer is stripped away. Overall I really enjoyed this book, I would have liked a little more conclusive ending because I like it when books close and all my hearts’ desires and questions are answered but then again…that’s just me.
BUY THE BOOK:
