I Was Here by Gayle Forman

I Was Here by Gayle Forman
"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, and some secrets of his own. 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."- summary from Amazon

You can't go wrong with a Gayle Forman book and she does it again with her latest. It's a poignant look into the aftermath of suicide and how it affects various people. Forman handles this subject matter very beautifully, as she always does. Cody is an interesting main character and there's a lot going on in her life even before this whole thing happened and this event changes everything.

As you can tell by the summary, a guy factors into her healing, but I believe the romance is mainly on the backburner for most of this novel as it should be. Romance can definitely help healing but it is not the only reason Cody is able to move past this trauma and become better. Uncovering what Meg went through and seeing what her life was like at college helped her understand more and heal.

Overall, Forman is just amazing and I cannot wait to read more from her. I highly recommend this latest book from her.

FTC: Received ARC from friend (Thanks Courtney!). Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.