I thought this was a great read. It was very tragic and frustrating at times, but it was still hauntingly, and heartbreakingly, beautiful. Not going to lie, I teared up while reading it. This is one of those books that you want to see as a movie. This book would make a perfect movie, the ways it’s written, All the flashbacks. I could see it being portrayed with so much emotion and being kind of a dark film.

I loved all the name drops and references. I loved how unique her family was, but yet so normal at the same time. I loved how her and her boyfriend were so different but so happy together. This book left me thinking about it days after I finished reading it. It’s definitely one that sticks with you. ( )

Mia's been in a car crash and is on the brink of death, so she spends a day choosing whether to live or die. Okay, that's oversimplified, she's thinking about her life, watching her parents and brother not be alive, seeing all the people who've come to see her, and remembering so much. She's not sure she wants to go on with her parents and brother dead. It struck me as strange - not that it would be a great loss, but that it might be too much of a loss to live with. She's finishing her senior year of high school and at a natural place to pull away from her family. She has a bright future and an important relationship with her boyfriend - to me it seems like so much to want, but I've never been balanced between life and death and maybe it would just seem easier to let go. ( )

Representation: Minor character with Down Syndrome
Trigger warnings: Death of parents, a child and brother in a car crash, near-death experience, coma, suicidal thoughts, out-of-body experience
Score: Seven points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

I wanted to read this book for a while now and not long after I picked it up from one of the two libraries I go to and I noticed something, one issue (I'll get to that later) and the second is the book tried to be emotional. Tried. I don't know why, but I didn't shed a single tear during any part of the book, it might have something to do with the plot? It starts with the main character Mia whose last name I don't remember and everything appears fine until she was in a car with her family when it ended up in a car crash. That accident killed Mia's parents and brother Teddy but she survived and now she is in this out-of-body experience which happens for most of the story. Now that I said that the book straight up turns from a linear to a non-linear one once it started putting in some flashbacks. There were a lot of them which almost made up half of the book and they told me about Mia's life before the accident, her relationships with her parents, brother and even Adam, and let me let you two things, one, I've seen a character like this before but it's rare to see a teenage character like classical music and two, I've seen books like this before in the form of Last Chance Angel by Alex Gutterridge and Broken by Elizabeth Pulford but they don't even compare to this. The first few pages revolve around Mia being evacuated and being on life support but after that the book slowed heavily from there but that didn't decrease my enjoyment of this though I would like it better if I could connect to the characters more. In the end Mia wakes up after only 200 pages and afterwards there were a lot of bonus content which I enjoyed reading. The entire book is dated but then again this was published a decade ago so there's that. ( )

I cried a bit. It was moving. 3 stars. ( )

This felt like 198pgs of a set up to the real story. I really hate the tendency to make everything into a series. I would much more appreciate a good story in one complete book. I feel like I'm being cashed in on when I find out everything is just one in a series of many. That said, I'll likely read the next one but I will wait until my library gets it before I pay out for it. ( )