NicoleeK

Goodreads Synopsis: 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.

Review:

Where to begin....I started this book and put it down not even 30 pages in for reasons I don't even remember, then months later I decided to pick it back up and finished it in one sitting.

This story dealt with the subject of suicide and how it affects those close to the person in such an honest and touching way. I really felt for Cody as she scrambled to understand how her best friend could do such a thing as take her own life and the knowledge of how Meg chose not to confide in her. I was also horrified to learn that these 'support groups'actually exist and give advice to people to commit suicide. How they can prey on people's insecurities when they're at a low point in their life is sickening!

Through Cody's journey of trying to find answers and a cause for her friends death she also found a way of accepting what happened and letting Meg go. I enjoyed the romance in this story as it progressed naturally with the storyline and didn't take away from the original subject matter.

After reading the authors note and discovering that the character of Meg was based off of a real person who had committed suicide really touched me as it made the story even more real.

Gayle Forman created a beautiful and touching story of loss, tragedy and romance :)