Book review : I WAS HERE.

 I regret to inform you that I have had to take my own life. This decision has been a long time coming, and was mine alone to make. I know it will cause you pain, and for that I am sorry, but please know that I needed to end my own pain. This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. Its not your fault.

Meg

 

The beginning of the story starts as the Cody, the heroin of this book read a letter (by email) that Meg, her best friend sent to her. 

The real deal starts when Cody leaves to Tacoma, only to pack up Meg's stuff in her dorm at the campus. But there, she met Alice, Richard, Harry and Ben - Ben McCallister. Ben was a friend to Meg, whom she may have crushed into, while the three of them are Meg's roommates. Cody began to know those people, in the process in knowing the true reason for Meg death. Alice and Richard has always been so kind to her, and Harry, though he's someone who do not speaks much but he helped, mostly in solving the encrypted messages from Meg's computer.

And well, this is why i love Harry Kang. 

And there's Ben, who accompanied Cody to find All_BS -  the one who may, encouraged Meg into her suicidal mission.

Ben and Cody wasn't in a good term at first, but as she sort-of-eulogized for Meg in Meg's campus, they began to understand each other - or perhaps tolerate each other. But along the trip, they do started to understands each other - for the "complicated and confused in a wholly fucked-up way" as Cody put it. 

I enjoy reading this book, it is a worth of reading. I love to see how the relationship between characters in this book grow - from strangers to friends, from a mother who may not have been a mother to her daughter in her 20 years old life but then suddenly become one, and maybe there's more to that. Also, it teaches you that no one is as what you expected them to be, or no one is as much as you have known who they are really is within years - that's Meg and Cody especially. And the quote, the life saying, is just amazing. Especially to this one, who told you about forgiveness.

 And in that moment, I was reminded just why God want us to forgive. Not simply because its the key to a better world, but because of what it does for ourselves.

I laugh, I shed tears, I'm in awe, I'm curious and all the emotions i got blend too well while reading I Was Here. This book teaches us how to handle grief, to handle pain and depression, to know that suicide does not resolves it all It teaches us life, how to go on after you losses someone, how to forgive, and know that it wasn't always you at fault. It is beautifully written by Gayle Forman, who's previous works is If I Stay. And i must to say, this is so much better than If I Stay, honestly.