If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Mia seems to have it all -- cool parents, musical talent, a rock star boyfriend. But then there's the accident, which leaves her at the side of the road looking at her parents' mangled dead bodies. When the emergency technicians arrive, pull a body out of the car, and begin to work on it, she realizes that it's her own.

Caught in a dreamlike limbo suspended between life and death, Mia observes as she and her brother are taken to the hospital. While doctors and nurses try to resuscitate them both, Mia looks over her own life and what she has left of it. She has to decide whether she's going to go with her parents or opt to live.

A hypnotic, slim tale about trauma, friendship, and what makes life worth living.

Bibliotherapeutic value: Though Mia has to deal with serious trauma, and she sees things that no one should ever see, this book -- which threatens to become a dread-logged tale about death -- becomes a pensive meditation on friendship and life.

Forman, Gayle. If I Stay. New York: Speak, 2010.

ISBN: 014241543X. $8.99.