If I Stay + Where She Went by Gayle Forman Review PLUS Trailer Analysis

Hello readers and welcome to the start of another week. Can you guys believe that August is nearly upon us? I sure can't! Coming up on Thursday is my 4 month blogiversary. I cannot believe it has already been that long. What an adventure we have been on readers! I hope for many, many more blogiversaries to share with ya'll!Today I have one of my specialties for you guys today! Excited? Well, you should be, because today I am bringing you guys one a OneGuysGuideToGoodReads specialty: a series review! “A series review?” You may ask, and I would respond “why yes, a series review my good chap”. Anyways, here’s how this works. Ethan here LOVES to read. He also loves to read series, HOWEVER, I have a hard time starting a series that I know isn’t completely out yet, because I oftentimes forget what happens by the time the next book in the series comes out and I usually do not have time for rereads or when I DO make time for a re read, the series ending is so horrible that I wish I hadn’t reread the books (*cough cough* Veronica Roth, I’m looking at you…). Anyway… As stated today I am bringing you guys another series review. If you guys have been following me, you would have seen a few months ago where I did a series review of Chelsea Fines The Archers of Avalon series and had a whole lot of fun with it, then last month I did a series review of Jennifer L. Armentrouts Covenant series which you guys really seemed to like! Then a week later I threw another series review in the form of K.A. Tucker's Causal Enchantment series at ya! They always go over well so I always get excited to write them. Today on the chopping block I have the EXTREMELY popular Gayle Forman YA series: If I Stay! Many readers are itching to get their hands on this one because of the movie coming out in the next few weeks so this is the perfect time to checkout the series.

Alright before we dive into specifics, here's the covers, synopses, and Goodreads links about each book plus a little about the author, Gayle Forman.

Just listen, Adam says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel.

I open my eyes wide now.
I sit up as much as I can.
And I listen.
Stay, he says.

Choices. Seventeen-year-old Mia is faced with some tough ones: Stay true to her first love—music—even if it means losing her boyfriend and leaving her family and friends behind?

Then one February morning Mia goes for a drive with her family, and in an instant, everything changes. Suddenly, all the choices are gone, except one. And it's the only one that matters.

If I Stay is a heartachingly beautiful book about the power of love, the true meaning of family, and the choices we all make.

It's been three years since Mia walked out of Adam's life.

And three years he's spent wondering why.

When their paths cross again in New York City, Adam and Mia are brought back together for one life-changing night.

Adam finally has the opportunity to ask Mia the questions that have been haunting him. But will a few hours in this magical city be enough to lay their past to rest, for good - or can you really have a second chance at first love?

Gayle Forman

Gayle Forman is an award-winning, internationally bestselling author and journalist. She is the author of Just One Day and Just One Year, and the companion e-novella Just One Night, as well as the New York Times bestsellers If I Stay and Where She Went. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughters.

Find Gayle Forman

Website ** Twitter ** Facebook ** Goodreads

Alright now that we've got the books and author intro out of the way. Let me show you guys the trailer for If I Stay which comes out August 22, 2014! In my thoughts I'll cover both books AND the trailer.




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My Thoughts:

I won't lie to you guys, I was a little nervous going into this review because I know this series has HUGE acclaim right now and that I can be a little over critical of things that are "in". I have tried to take that into consideration in writing this review. Let me start at the bottom and work my way forward. It'll make sense, just stick with me. I actually only read this series after I saw the movie trailer!

The Trailer
Okay. My reaction upon seeing the trailer is "woah, I don't like cheesy love stories, but this looks amazing". That cast looks great, the music picked for the trailer looks like it fits the situation spot on. I definitely want to see this film. Oh wait. It's based off the bestselling Gayle Forman book? I should probably see what the hype is about!

If I Stay

Wait... are you guy sure this is the same book that awesome trailer was based on? No. I'm not being funny. Not at all. In fact there is nothing funny about If I Stay. No, you're right, it isn't a comedy, but uh... could it have been any more depressing?

Okay. I will just start out by saying I was not a huge fan of If I Stay. This was my first foray into Mrs. Forman's work and I almost couldn't finish it. I have been told that maybe it's because I am a guy, but I really just did not care for this story as much as many people undoubtedly have. I read the whole thing in one sitting, it was a very easy read and I really liked that about it, but even for a YA novel it just seems so... "young". Okay, before you start seething from my thoughts, let me get some of the positive aspects of the book out of the way.

I love the storyline. I'll be as spoiler free as possible here. I thought the story of Mia being the sole survivor in a horrible accident would make for a story with a great plot and full of emotion. On that front, Forman definitely does not disappoint. The book is sad to nearly the point of tears, but I almost wonder why it needed to be so damned depressing? I felt all the feels that I was supposed to, but in the end, I just didn't see why. Mia's family was great and I loved how Forman told us their story in the form of flashback as often as possible. It was a nice touch. I'll come back to the flashbacks in just a bit.

Okay here's a few of my bigger negative thoughts about If I Stay. First off, those flashbacks were ridiculously crazy. They were in no order and they seriously come out of nowhere. At times I didn't know if I was reading the present or a flashback so it made the story really hard to follow at times. Most of them added to the plot, but some... not so much. My thinking here is that this was a 200 page novel. I was much more worried about Mia in the present than all these back stories that didn't mean anything in the end.

Second problem. The trailer makes Adam out to be one of the biggest characters of the movie, which is great, except oh yeah wait... He isn't hardly in the book. Sure Mia has a boyfriend, yes he is there, and yes it is very heartbreaking, but at no point in this book did I think Adam was as big of a character as he should have been. He was her boyfriends for God's sake. he should have been WAY more of a primary character than her now dead family. Maybe it was just me, again, but him being all there and stuff for her (even canceling the defining show of his career, which I totally understand) and Mia just kind of being like "meh" was pretty hard for me to take in.

I loved the characters of book one. Mia, Kim, Adam, Teddy, the family. Seriously, they were all great, I just wish we had seen more of them. More of them alive, that is. My biggest issues were with Mia's character as a whole. The story is gut wrenchingly emotional but Mia really got on my last nerve. Unfortunately that didn't change in book two. I'll get there in a second though.

All-in-all I am giving If I Stay a 3 Star overall review. I know that may seem a little harsh, and it kind of is, but I really really disappointed by this read. I really hoped it would meet the hype and not just be another read that's ridiculously overrated by the masses. Judging by the trailer I had really high hopes that were ultimately crushed. If the film is half as good as that trailer makes it look then I have no doubt that I will enjoy it far better than the book.


Where She Went 
I will start out by saying the most important thing about this book. I liked it WAY more than If I Stay! My biggest issues were, again, with Mia.

I'll go ahead and knock all the negatives out of the way first this time. The very first line of the synopsis gives away my biggest problem: "It's been three years since Mia walked out of Adam's life." Wait. WHAT?! You mean to tell me after all that she left him? Oh yeah. That was the tipping point for me with Mia. I am just done with her. Book two, thankfully, takes place from Adam's POV three years after book one. Adam had shot to superstardom when his band, Shooting Star, hits the scene in a huge way. Essentially they are the One Direction of this book universe. Adam is the biggest thing since sliced bread, yet he cannot get over the devastating loss of his one true love, Mia. Why did Mia leave Adam? Because she is selfish. No seriously, I'm not going to run the entire book here but there is a confrontation and it was THE DUMBEST thing I've ever heard. Mia treats Adam like absolute crap and yet we're still supposed to love her? No. Mia has basically ruined Adam's life and now we have to forgive her. Like I said, no spoilers, but the scene in question takes place atop the Brooklyn bridge. The same bridge I would have pushed Mia off of, had I been Adam. I don't use memes, EVER, but this seems appropriate here:
                                                        
The angst is STRONG with this one. Now it has come to my attention that maybe I don't like this aspect of the story because it really does hit close to home with me. Guy treats girl like princess, guy gets left out in the cold. Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone has been there, but I felt like I seriously could relate better to Adam more than many other characters I have read. Adam was extremely misunderstood and really pushed aside in book one so I was really glad to hear all about his life. Adam is a great character and may be added to the list of my favorite male book characters, which is the only reason I am reviewing book two so high. Adam has a great story. Again, like book one, I read this in one sitting. The difference being that I read this one so fast because I was in love with it, not because I wanted to hurry up and finish it!

The interesting thing about Where She Went is that is takes place over the course of a single day yet so much happens. We see a remarkable character transformation from Adam, and thankfully a somewhat happy ending. This book also featured heavy use of the flashbacks which were just as distracting this time around, except this time they added to the story. I love classical music more than I like rocking out, so you would think I would appreciate the class and elegance of Mia's story... wrong. Adam seriously kept me interested from page one.

The emotions were in check and well written, Adam's character development was phenomenal, and the ending was.... somewhat satisfying (you can tell that it was the easy way to please fans). I am so glad I didn't stop after book one because book two really hit it out of the park. If there was a way I could have JUST read book two, I probably would have. IN FACT here's my suggestion. Let's ditch this whole two book thing and just make it one book. One book in two parts. It'd still only be about 400 pages and I would have been way happier. I cannot imagine having had to wait 2 years for this second novel in the series to come out, I would not have been happy, at all.

Overall I am giving Where She Went a solid 4.25 rating I had lots of problems with this read as well, but nowhere near the issues I had with book one. I highly recommend this read, however book one needs to be read first so it's really a moot point.  Take it however you will readers, but book two is well worth suffering through book one!
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Where can you get your copy? Click the links below to be taken to Gayle Forman's store pages!

*Disclaimer $4.99 is rather pricey for an ebook. Just saying*

 Amazon | Barnes & Noble 

Alright readers, there you have it. My series review If I Stay by Gayle Forman. It may not have been my favorite series of all time, but I'm still glad I check it out before the film's release later this summer (8/22). I know LOTS of people love this series so I just want to point out that mine is only one of thousands of reviews of this series. Please read the series for yourself and don't solely make decision based off one reviewer! I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below! Until next time, Happy Reading!

-Ethan

Causal Enchantment by K.A. Tucker Series Review + GIVEAWAY

Hello readers and a very happy Thursday to you all! Can you believe that June of 2014 is nearly half way over? I sure can’t! It’s been an awesome year so far and I am so excited to see what the second half holds for all of us! On this awesome Thursday evening, I have a real special treat for my amazing readers. I will be reviewing one of the most exciting series I have read in a long time. A series so unique that I don't even have anything to compare it to. Excited? Well, you should be, because today I am bringing you guys one a OneGuysGuideToGoodReads specialty: a series review! “A series review?” You may ask, and I would respond “why yes, a series review my good chap”. Anyways, here’s how this works. Ethan here LOVES to read. He also loves to read series, HOWEVER, I have a hard time starting a series that I know isn’t completely out yet, because I oftentimes forget what happens by the time the next book in the series comes out and I usually do not have time for rereads or when I DO make time for a re read, the series ending is so horrible that I wish I hadn’t reread the books (*cough cough* Veronica Roth, I’m looking at you…). Anyway… As stated today I am bringing you guys another series review. If you guys have been following me, you would have seen a couple of months ago where I did a series review of Chelsea Fines The Archers of Avalon series and had a whole lot of fun with it, the just last week I did a series review of Jennifer L. Armentrouts Covenant series which you guys really seemed to like! Today I present to you guys a book series so freaking awesome that there aren’t enough positive words to describe it. A series that was so good that I want to stop this blog post and go read it all over again. However, I haven't seen a WHOLE lot of publicity for this series and happened upon thanks to a suggestion from a fellow blogger. I really wanted to do my part to promote this series, because like I said it was amazing. Our featured author is widely popular for her NA series and is one of the coolest authors I have had the great pleasure to meet. Without farther adieu I present to you guys the Causal Enchantment series by K.A. Tucker!

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty with the review, let's learn a little bit about our amazing author, Mrs. K.A. (Kathleen) Tucker. As many of you saw in my Nashville Author Event Review post, I had the great honor of meeting Mrs. Tucker last Saturday in Nashville at said event. I knew of several other authors at the event, but KA was the one that I was THE MOST excited to see. Since the authors were seated in alphabetical order, she was the very last one I got to meet which made the anticipation almost too much to bear! I was about halfway through the series when I met KA, but I knew plenty about her from other bloggers and fans. KA is widely known and acclaimed for her Ten Tint Breaths New Adult series. I have not read this series, but like I said, she came to me HIGHLY recommended. Also, to make mater even more awesome, KA is an InkSlinger author and works closely with KP (one of my all time favorite people), so we already had a connection! Okay, I went a little overboard. Here's the official bio and information about K.A. Tucker!

K.A. Tucker

Born in small-town Ontario, Kathleen published her first book at the age of six with the help of her elementary school librarian and a box of crayons.

She is a voracious reader and the farthest thing from a genre-snob, loving everything from High Fantasy to Chick Lit.

Kathleen currently resides in a quaint small town outside of Toronto with her husband, two beautiful girls, and an exhausting brood of four-legged creatures. 

Click here to visit KA's Goodreads Page

Click here to visit KA's Official Website

Here's a pic of me with KA Tucker last weekend in Nashville!

As previously stated this is a series review where I will review the series as a whole. While this can be a whole lot of fun for me, it can get a little confusing. The only downside to doing this is that I do not remember what happened in each book since they all eventually tie into one long story. And yes, I mean one long story. Just the way I like it. This isn’t your average trilogy or saga, this is one series that is well worth the time you will spend putting into it. The Causal Enchantment  series features four full length novels. Here is the reading order for each Causal Enchantment novel as well as the synopsis for each. Click each cover to be taken to the official Goodreads page for each book. Scroll past all the covers to get to the fun part!

Book One Anathema 

Evangeline has spent her teenage years in obscurity. Her foster parents have the emotional aptitude of robots and her classmates barely acknowledge her existence. About to turn eighteen and feeling like a social pariah, she is desperate to connect with someone. Anyone.

When Evangeline meets Sophie after literally stumbling upon her café, she believes she’s found that connection. Willing to do anything to keep it, she accepts a job as Sofie’s assistant and drops everything to fly to Manhattan, where she is thrust into a luxurious world of Prada, diamonds, and limitless cash.

With such generosity and kindness, it’s easy for Evangeline to dismiss certain oddities... like Sofie’s erratic and sometimes violent behavior, and the monstrous guard dogs. She’s even willing to dismiss her vivid dreams of mob-style murders, beautiful homeless people living in caves, and white-eyed demons that haunt her each night as figments of her imagination—especially when one of those figments is the gorgeous Caden. When she wakes up with bite marks on her neck, the fairy tale quickly turns into a nightmare. She slowly unravels the mystery surrounding Sofie and friends, and the reality of the bites and the “dreams.” What she discovers is far more mysterious and terrible than anything she could have imagined.

In a world where everyone has motive to lie for personal gain, Evangeline must decide which deception is least likely to get her killed.

Book Two Asylum

Tucked away in Sofie’s wintery asylum with no hope of release for years, Evangeline must come to terms with her situation: the curse still plagues her, she’s now hunted by a two thousand-year-old vampire, and the guy she’s in love with tried to kill her. Plus, she’s locked up with a cranky Max and the Forero kids—two people everyone seems to prefer dead over alive. Things aren’t looking good.

Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, Sofie struggles to keep forty trapped and bloodthirsty Ratheus vampires at bay and a desperate Viggo from killing Evangeline’s friends, all while hints stir outside the walls of the NYC vampire asylum of a war brewing between the Sentinel and the witches.

Is there any hope for Evangeline and Caden? Can Sofie control the rival powers? Is the fate of Earth predestined?

Book Three Allegiance

Evangeline finally got what she longed for – the cursed pendant off her neck and Caden in her arms - only it has come at a steep price. An unknown poison now courses through her body, slowly morphing her into something no one but the Fates can foresee. She has her suspicions though...and, if she is right, it will spell certain ruin for her and Caden. She won’t last long enough to realize that though, if Viggo and Mortimer uncover the treasonous secrets she keeps from them– that Veronique is now free of her entombment and in the torturous clutches of the Witches and the Sentinel or that she is protecting a Sentinel within their very midst.
Always the naive human caught in the midst of the vampires’ web of deceit, Evangeline is now weaving her own dangerous web in order to keep her friend alive, rescue Veronique, and stop a seemingly inevitable war from starting. But can her honourable nature handle the depths of duplicity for which she must go to be in league with the Vampires?
Dark and gripping, full of angst-riddled scenes, Allegiance will have readers anxiously turning pages to find out if Evangeline can survive this spiraling disaster.

Book Four Anomaly

She was merely a pawn in their game.
And then something happened.
Once the fragile, naïve human, Evangeline has become altogether … different.
A being who holds formidable power, she may be the key to changing the course of fate.
Or she could be the final nail in the world’s coffin.
But Evangeline doesn’t know exactly what she is, what she can do. She knows only that she has to stop an enemy far worse than the Sentinel and the sorceresses—one driven by revenge.
And he’s hunting the man she loves.
As Evangeline fights to keep Caden alive and the human population from eradication, she can’t help but sense the imminent doom.
Find out if fate will prevail in the harrowing conclusion to the Causal Enchantment series.

Click here for the Causal Enchantment series Goodreads page! 

The Covers

 

I feel like I need to add this section for a couple of reasons. First I will just say that I oftentimes am the reason they have the saying "never judge a book by its' cover", because if the book cover sucks or is in any way uninteresting to me, I seriously won't usually read the book. True story.

The reason I feel the need to bring this up is because I really love the covers for the Causal Enchantment series. The ones you guys saw above with the synopses are the current covers that were included in the re-released books, but they weren't the firsts. KA actually told me the story in Nashville that the covers you see to the left were the original covers to the series. These covers are AMAZING. I almost like them more than the current ones, which I thought were amazing in the first place. Sometimes less is more for me. I love these older covers, but KA was telling me that her artist was unavailable for book four (the final book in the series) so they had to start over and redo the covers for all four books in order for them to match, which I am so glad they did. The cover really makes these books all the cooler in my opinion. I could serious write an entire post about book covers, because they are oftentimes one of my favorite part of the books! I just wanted to give these original covers a few lines of recognition because they definitely deserve it!

Character Analysis

As you can assume, a series such as the Causal Enchantment has a HUGE cast of characters including vampires, witches, werewolves, and many other supernatural beings, here's my take on two of the main characters in our series and a little about the cast as a whole! 

Evangeline Watts- Our main female protagonist. Evangeline (or Eve/Evie depending on who is addressing her) is the orphaned eighteen year old mortal from Portland, Maine. In book one Evangeline befriends Sophie in the strangest of ways, after that her life changes for good. She goes from a lonely nobody, to Cafe worker (so she thinks), to realm traveler, to something else over the course of her journey. Evie is a really interesting character in my opinion, and one I can only imagine was really interesting for KA to write. Evie develops so much over the course of the four books that by the time you finish Anomaly, you don't know if you are reading about the same character. She really evolves that much. From the first time they met, Evangeline's heart belongs to Caden and although there is definitely some drama there, their love story is really interesting to read. Unlike other YA Paranormals with a romance, KA doesn't make that the selling point for this series. It's a very complex story that just so happens to contain a romance. Evangeline is seriously probably one of my new favorite book heroines. 

Caden Jennings- Caden, our main male protagonist. Caden is a member of the group introduced very early on in the series known as the Ratheus Vampires. As you guys will read, Ratheus is a parallel planet that is strikingly similar to Earth. Unlike Earth, however, Ratheus is a wasteland where humans have been hunted to extinction some 700 years prior to the start of the series. Caden and his group of friends are members of that distopian society where Vampires rule what is left of the planet. Caden is a friend, a lover, a soldier, and a very knowledgeable ally. Although Caden does not evolve as much as his love Evangeline, his story is just as interesting. After being pulled from Ratheus to Earth, Caden does everything in his power to protect Evie and ensure that her home does not end up like his. 

This is just an analysis of two characters, and not even the two main characters. This series has so many characters that all play very important roles in the story. Some of the more important characters to be on the watch for include:

Sophie Girard* (Books 2,3 and 4 also told in her POV), Viggo, Mortimer, Max, Veronique, Amelie, Bishop, Fiona, Julian, Leo, Ursula, Mage, Lilly, and Mage

Books 3 and 4 also includes four VERY important characters Terra, Incendia, Unda, and A'ris who make up The Fates 

My Thoughts

Okay, now that you have read all these awesome things about the books, to covers, and the characters, I will throw a little bit about my thoughts on the series into the mix. I will admit that I stared at this series for awhile before I started them. The synopsis really threw me off. I didn't understand what I was reading. Let me just say that this is unlike any paranormal fiction novel series you have ever read. Sure there are vampires, witches, werewolfs, etc, but I honestly don't feel like any one of these species overruns the storyline. They all play a very important role. You could replace any of the specials with something entirely different (say fairies) and they series would make just as much sense (well, except for the blood thing). I just want to throw this out there because I know some people aren't vampire people, although I can't imagine why. 

I will also say that the first 50 pages or so of book one are the hardest to get through. As with any book you have to establish a background and a setting, but this story more or less jumps right in. We learn very little of Evangline's life prior to book one except that her parents are deceased. Usually I would say that is a bad thing, but this series has SO MUCH going on that you really don't even think of it. Once you get to books 3 and 4 the events of the first 50 pages won't matter to you at all! 

This series was so well written and it flowed so well from book to book. I do admit that I was left with some questions in the end, but overall I think KA Tucker has done an amazing job with this series. I can't say too much without giving away any plot lines, but I will just say that in true paranormal fashion, you do NOT see the ending coming. Speaking of the ending: I have read several other reviews and it is kind of mixed. Some people really enjoyed the ending while others despised it. I actually liked it. I DO think the series was wrapped up a little "too neatly" but I think overall the ending is fitting for the story. It answers nearly every question you may have and leaves the reader feeling satisfied. Which is exactly how I want to feel after devoting my time to reading four books. overall, I really loved the Causal Enchantment series. Like I said in the beginning, it is probably the most original idea for a paranormal series I have read in a VERY long time and I think that is why I was drawn to it. It really is unlike anything you will have read before. I highly recommend it and hope you all read and enjoy it as well. 

As I have said in other series reviews I have SO much to say on the topic of Causal Enchantment, so check back in case I add more to this post! I would love to hear from any of you if you have also read this amazing series.  

**Now for the really exciting part. Where can YOU get your hands on this amazing series?! Well, I have really awesome news for you guys. Anathema, book one in the series, the one that started it all is FREE. You read that right, FREE. I got my copy from B&N, but I checked Amazon and it's free there as well. Follow any of these links you pick up your free copy of Anathema and also to find out where you can purchase your very own copies of the other books in the series!

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OTHER(ebook): | Sony | Deisel | OTHER(print): Books-a-million | Book Depository

Don't want to buy the books? I can understand that. Well, as you guys know, I LOVE doing giveaways so I have another awesome one here for you to win with TWO amazing prizes. First off, I am giving away an ecopy of any Causal Enchantment title (books 2,3, OR 4; remember, book 1 is free)! Also to a second winner, I am giving away a SIGNED swag pack from KA Tucker including signed Causal Enchantment bookmarks and a postcard! Fill out the rafflecopter below, you guys know the drill! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Alright readers, I thank you so much for stopping by and checking out my take on the Causal Enchantment series by the absolutely amazing K.A. Tucker. Please check out this series, you most definitely will not regret it! Fill out the rafflecopter above, comment below, and tell your friends! Come on back after you've read it and let me know what you thought about the series. Also, check back on this post in a few days as I intend on adding to it! I have lots of thoughts swirling around that I would like to put on here, but my brain is fried at the moment and I wanted to make sure you guys had ample time to enter the giveaway! Thanks again for stopping by readers, and until next time, Happy Reading!

-Ethan