REVIEW: I WAS HERE, BY GAYLE FORMAN

 

 

Cody and Meg had been best friends for many years, and despite the separation due to college—Meg was away at Cascades College—they still felt like two halves of one whole. But something had changed. Cody thought it must be their very separate lives, or it could have been something they had argued about.

Before Cody has figured it out, though, she is shocked by the discovery that Meg has killed herself. In a motel room all alone. And she had scheduled the release of her suicide notes, making it clear that everything was planned out to the last detail.

Joe and Sue Garcia, Meg’s parents, are devastated, and when Cody offers to go to Tacoma to pick up Meg’s things, they seem relieved.

I Was Here was a journey, one taken by a grieving young woman who cannot believe that her best friend would willingly leave this life. A journey that will provide unexpected answers, and not the ones Cody was hoping to find.

We are offered a peek into the life Meg lived with her housemates, none of whom really knew her. We see how Cody comes to realize that, despite what she has hoped to prove by her investigation of the Final Solutions website and the people there who seem to “mentor” young people into how to kill themselves, what she discovers instead is a way to make peace with who Meg was…and who she was, too. Not a mystery, really, but a winding exploration of the meaning of friendship and connections. A book I could not put down. 5 stars.

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