Where She Went is the (somewhat unnecessary) sequel to If I Stay. At the end of If I Stay, Mia decided to soldier on through life despite the deaths of her entire family (parents and younger brother). Where She Went takes place three years later, and is told from the perspective of Adam, Mia’s boyfriend from If I Stay.
Adam is a rockstar. Superfamous, dating a model or movie star or something. He hasn’t spoken to Mia in two and a half years, since she left for Julliard and stopped writing back. Ouch. She hasn’t been back to their Oregon hometown since she left, and at some point he had to just move on. His pain from Mia fueled the album that made his band internationally famous, and they are in the middle of a tour. It’s reached the point where people are separating The Front Man from The Rest of the Band and doing interviews separately to make him The Band. As they do. Adam is lonely and lost.
As the band is in New York City for its last show before heading to a European tour, Adam wanders by Carnegie Hall and sees that Mia is playing. Oh my. He sneaks a cheap ticket and watches her play. At the end of the show, an usher stops him and tells him that Mia requested he come backstage. Apparently rockstars can’t sneak into Carnegie without being noticed. Next thing you know, Adam and Mia are wandering New York all night long. At first they chat like you do with an old acquaintance with whom you’ve lost touch – polite smalltalk. As the night goes on, they find themselves laughing over old jokes, but that laughter brings up old pain as well. Of course they have a big fat knock-down-drag-out scream at each other scene. How could they not? They’re both broken by this huge big event and have both tried to survive it on their own and are each having some successes but are personal and emotional wrecks.
I don’t know that a sequel needed to be written. It probably didn’t. But since it was, I’m glad it was this one.
