[Review] I Was Here by Gayle Forman

Title: I Was Here

Author: Gayle Forman [Website | Twitter | Tumblr]

Publisher: Viking Juvenile, an imprint of Penguin Books

Genre: Young Adult Fiction - Contemporary, Social Issues

Release Date: January 27, 2015

Source: ARC provided by the publisher, opinions are honest and my own. – review policy here.

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. – via Goodreads

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Gayle hurt my feels...

The synopsis give the big feel hurter away and the book's first page dives right into Meg's passing. However, it's Cody's journey in the last few chapters that totally did me in. I don't even think it was intended to be an ugly-cry-in-public moment but the beauty of the writing, combined with the character development and topped off with revelations need the comfort of my road trip sobs.

I thought this was going one way but it ended up being simpler and more complicated than that...

Cody's investigation leads to an encrypted computer file which starts to paint a picture of how Meg ended up where she did. At this point I was like "ah, ha" and everything clicked and I was like "plot solved, let's do this". Like Cody, I too was wrong and Gayle's writing folded me back into the story and I let her take the wheel.

Love is love

Really if you want to know why you should read this it's love. Parental love, friend love, humankind love, romantic love... all types of love. It tests the idea of family and who should love us versus who does love us. It challenges how strong and weak love really is. Figuratively, breaking the ultimate Beatles' promise.

Cody's character development is on a self-actualization scale here. Breaking apart her Matrix style world to discover that perceptions are not realities. While I'm not crazy about her name I have no doubt that she she'll be okay and she'd make one hell of a BFF. The secondary characters of Ben, her mom, and Meg's family each add in their own unique dynamic to teeter totter with Cody's narrative. Their growth as characters is in direct reflection to Cody's growth and off with the rose colored glasses.

This got real... really real. Like personal and spooky real.

I can't go into anything here without spoiling major plot points but the result definitely made me reflect on my friendships, things that I know (and don't know) about them, my unwavering love for my friends/family, and then accepting that they come as they are. And that is the hardest part about love.

5 Stars – Gayle at her finest. Hauntingly sad and yet a redeeming story about our persons.