Review: I Was Here by Gayle Forman

I Was Here by Gayle Forman 
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
Release Day: January 27, 2015
Book Format: Hardcover
# of Pages: 270
Synopsis:
Cody and Meg were inseparable.
Two peas in a pod.
Until . . . they weren’t anymore.

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.

My Review:
I borrowed I Was Here by Gayle Forman from Barnes & Noble and this is my honest review.

I Was Here is about a young girl named Meg who goes off to college, and not too long after starting she commits suicide by poisoning herself. Before she dies she writes an email and sets it to send to her parents, and best friend a few days after so that they cannot save her. After her death her best friend Cody is tasked by her parents to go down to her dorm at school and clean it out for them. While there Cody meets Megs friends, mostly acquaintances and learns much about her best friends estranged life.

I have read a few different stories about suicide, but I have to say this by far has been the most unique one. Meg decides to take a very rare poison to off herself. I have always had a thing for road trip books so the fact that Cody had to take many road trips to get herself through this book was fascinating.

I enjoyed meeting all of the characters including Richard, as well as his family, Alice, Tree, and especially Ben. In the beginning I was convinced not to like Ben because well he was involved with Meg before she died, but by the end of the book I was hooked even if I did not want to be. I loved Cody as a character, she was extremely determined to find out what happened to her friend and why she did what she did. It was nice to see that kind of friendship between two people even though at some point it went south.

Overall, the book showed me what true friendship was and how meaningful it is.