If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Released April 2009

If I Stay has been getting a lot of buzz and positive reviews, so I was excited to dive in. This is the story of 17-year-old Mia. She’s an accomplished cellist, loves spending time with her family, and has a punk-rock boyfriend that she’s crazy about. She’s also in a coma, barely hanging on after a terrible car accident. To stay or not to stay is her decision, and much of the book is Mia looking back on her life, hoping the moments that she remembers will help her decide. I was a little disappointed in the first half of the book; I felt I didn’t get a chance to know the characters well enough before the accident and wondered how the decision between life and death could possibly be a difficult one for Mia. However somewhere along the way of reading, I became totally immersed in Mia’s life, begging, like her friends and family, for her to stay. I appreciated that this novel was short compared to all of the epic 700-pagers lately; Forman added no unnecessary details to bog down the story. Fans of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and Jenny Downham’s Before I Die will like this one.  –Becky Fermanich, Youth Services Librarian

The Eternals by Neil Gaiman

Released: July 16, 2008

“Jack Kirby’s old Eternals series gets a serious dusting-off from Gaiman (Anansi Boys) and artist Romita. The Eternals, a super-race, are now scattered and forgetful of their powers and immortality, living mortal human lives of supreme normalcy (Sersi is a New York party girl, while Makkari believes himself to be Bellevue ER doc Mark Curry). Meanwhile their age-old enemies, the Deviants, stalk the earth with nefarious intentions, and at least one of the super-duper-race Celestials (who created both Deviants and Eternals eons ago) may be returning to Earth. The source of all this forgetfulness and strife appears to be the eternally 11-year-old Sprite, who desires to be allowed to age like an actual human. It is easy to spot Gaiman’s touch in this modern-day clash between ancient forces, as he shies away from Kirby’s ’70s-era, Chariots of God–style alien mythologizing to focus more on the characters’ slow coming to grips with the enormity of their identity and the loss of humanity that comes from being an Eternal. Romita’s storytelling is strong without coming near Kirby’s epochal original. While Gaiman fans will still sign up, it isn’t long before the tale gets tangled in the Olympian scope of this often baffling struggle.” Publishers Weekly