What a beautiful book. I listened to this on my commute, which was possibly a bad idea because my tear ducts get a little overactive when potentially sad things are happening.

Yes, this is a fairly depressing book. It’s about a teenage girl who gets into a horrific car accident with her family, and has an out-of-body experience while the doctors are keeping an eye on her unconscious and beaten-up body. She watches her family and friends as they come in to see her and as they interact with each other, and she reminisces about her life to this point — how she started playing the cello, how she started dating a super-cool rockstar, how she was anxious about her future, etc. She also wonders if she’s strong enough to try to keep living, which is what that title is all about.

I was often expecting there to be some sort of twist that would show that Mia’s life wasn’t as normal and nice as she thought it was, but that never happened. I appreciated that, in the end — it made her choice that much more difficult, and made her seem more real to me, as a person who has been lucky enough to have a fairly easy life.

And the narrator is awesome. I highly recommend listening to this book.

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Maw Books Blog
biblio+chic
My Friend Amy

Pass me yours, if you’ve got ’em.