Stay with Me

"Stay with me," I say, wishing I'd said it to my sister but also wanting to hear it from him. "Stay with you?" he asks. "No," I say. "You've messed up the pronoun." Leila is the product of her father's second marriage. Her parents are still happily married, and she is their only child. She has two half-sisters from her father's first marriage, but she is not as close to them as she would like to be. Rebecca and Clare were in their twenties with Leila was born, so even though she is now approaching the age of seventeen, Leila still feels like a kid in their presence. Even more remarkable than her parents' loving marriage is Leila's other source of adult support: Janie, her father's first wife. The book begins with Leila's memories of Janie, and the loss she felt when Janie passed away. It continues with the revelation that Rebecca has committed suicide, causing those familiar feelings of loss and regret to rise to the surface but in a new way. As Leila attempts to figure out what would cause Rebecca to do such a thing, she makes startling discoveries about her family members - and herself. What she thought she knew may not be true at all. "There's such a gap between the images I carry in my mind and what can actually be found in the world." Among many other things, Leila learns that nothing valuable is easy. Her life is as complex as that of any real person, and the book seamlessly weaves together various plotlines that touch Leila's life, with each given appropriate weight and attention. In Freymann-Weyr's best novel to date, the author has created characters who are intelligent, each in his or her own way, and realistically flawed. The first-person narrative is poignant and poetic, offering many memorable scenes and exchanges of dialogue. "For me, they are one more thing that belongs in someone else's story." This book is something to savor and share. Leila's story with stay with readers long after they finish the last page. Highly recommended to adults and older teens.

When Leila's much older sister, Rebecca, kills herself, it changes the lives of everyone who knew her, and many people who didn't. But did anyone really know Rebecca, or just the face she showed them? This is just one of the questions that Leila can't help but ask herself in the months after her sister's death. Did she know Rebecca? Or did she only know Rebecca through her interactions with other people? Leila knows her father. She knew her father's first wife, Janie, who died before Rebecca. But if she had really known Rebecca, if anyone had known Rebecca fully, wouldn't they have been able to figure out Rebecca's reasons for doing what she did? It's for that reason that Leila is searching when she meets Eamon. At first he's only a customer in the café where she once saw Rebecca with the mysterious T., a man she thinks might know something of the reason Rebecca had for committing suicide. Later, though, he becomes something much more. Clare is Leila's surviving older half-sister. Clare has her own life: a boyfriend, a career, and an apartment--suddenly one occupant short. Rebecca lived there, and now that Leila's parents are moving to Poland for the year, she will move in with Clare. During this year, Clare and Raphael, their unrelated "cousin," will become much, much more important in Leila's life. She will get to know them, maybe in the way she never got to know Rebecca--the way she is still trying to get to know Rebecca, even after her death. STAY WITH ME is a very powerful, moving story about love, loss, and life. It's about the way life keeps going on, even after a tragedy. Since it takes place in New York and since Rebecca dies right after the attacks on the city on 9/11, the characters are healing from their own personal tragedy, but also, along with everyone else in the city, from the attack on them all. That's not the focus of the novel, but it's definitely a part of it. Garrett Freymann-Weyr is brilliant at creating wonderful, three-dimensional characters. I've read two of her previous novels (My Heartbeat and When I Was Older), and that's something that can be seen in all of her work. It's a talent, and I was glad to see it shows just as much in STAY WITH ME as in the other two novels. We learn plenty, even about the characters only glimpsed in the novel. The character I felt I knew the least was Leila's mother, but she was not really a part of this story. She hardly knew Rebecca, whose death is what sets off the whole story (though Leila chooses to start the telling of it with her visits to Janie, her father's first wife). There are so many parts to this story, but Rebecca, her life and death, is what ties it all together so marvelously. Reviewed by: Jocelyn Pearce

A girl's dyslexia, relationships with a father and stepmother, and determination to investigate romance, cheating and death makes for a vivid multi-faceted story in Stay With Me, which follows her evolving sense of self in the face of disability and changes. Stay With Me is a recommended pick for mature teens who will find plenty of interest in a story of love which keeps on changing.

Stay With Me is a highly complex and rewarding young adult novel. It tells of a year in the life of sixteen-year-old Leila Abranel, a New York City high school student with a rather unconventional family. Leila begins her story indirectly, recounting her occasional meetings with her sisters' mother. Leila has two much older half-sisters, from her father's doomed first marriage. Leila admires her vibrant and quirky sister Rebecca, and turns to her for advice, while respecting her more formal sister Clare's preference to remain distant. The family has a balance, if an unusual one, right up until Rebecca commits suicide. After Rebecca's clearly premediatated suicide, everything changes for Leila. Her parents take a one-year job helping to create a new teaching hospital in Poland. Leila moves in with her sister Clare, and has Raphael, a distant cousin (and former boyfriend of Clare's), as a secondary guardian. Leila goes on with her life - school, a part-time job, finally getting to know Clare - but struggles to understand Rebecca's suicide. She latches on to her last sighting of Rebecca, and tries to find the person that Rebecca was with at the time, thinking that he might have some insight for her. This book is about so many different things. Stay With Me is about what it means to be a family. (Raphael, despite his relatively distant family connection, helps Leila with her homework, gives her advice, and takes on a near-parental role.) Stay With Me is about trusting your own body (and yourself), and knowing what you are and are not ready for sexually. Stay With Me is about why someone with most of her life ahead of her would commit suicide, and the devastating impact of a suicide on the people left behind. Stay With Me is about what it's like to be dyslexic (Leila is dyslexic), and how it can affect a person's entire way of thinking. And yes, as you are sure to read in other reviews, Stay With Me is about teen-aged Leila's friendship with and sexual interest in a 31-year-old man, Eamon. What I found remarkable about this entire storyline was how normal Freymann-Weyr made it seem, and how NOT creepy the plot-line was. I want to be sure to get this across to you, because I was initially hesitant to read the book, knowing about this Lolita-esque theme. Leila's relationship with Eamon is an important part of the book, but it's only a part of a much more fully realized story, and it's handled exceedingly well. I found Stay With Me to be very well-written. The characters, especially Leila, are complex and realistic. Leila's voice is particularly engaging. Her dyslexia shapes her perceptions of herself, her ability to make decisions, and her day-to-day life, with a pervasiveness that I hadn't anticipated or understood before reading this book. Somehow Freymann-Weyr conveys this without ever making Leila someone to be pitied or ridiculed over her learning disability. It's a remarkable achievement. I think that high school readers will enjoy this

Much like this author's last novel My Heartbeat - this new effort deals with relationships and how complicated, confusing and messy they can be. The protagonist Leila navigates her way through her complicated family, an "impossible" and "all wrong" relationship with a much older man and coping with her sister's suicide. Indeed it as Leila moves away from needing a reason for her sister Rebecca's death towards accepting the loss, that she matures and grows. I think one of Garret Freymann-Weyr's strengths as an author is her ability to create characters who demand the reader's, attention, concern and attachment. Leila in this novel and Ellen in My Heartbeat live on in a little corner of my heart. I would still say My Heartbeat outshines Stay With Me - but that's based on how tender and unsure Ellen was. Now I am going to address an issue which I am sure is going to come up: Leila's relationship with a thirty-one year old man. Freymann-Weyr is very brave for not compromising Leila's story by turning her relationship with Eamon into a morality lesson. In describing people's reactions to their relationship Eamon states "the men all think I've done something brilliant and...the women think I should be shot." In real life - I would probably fall into the latter category and in real life I can't fathom their relationship working due to their differences in life experiences. But this is a work of fiction - and people sometimes forget that. I wish readers would remember: that by including a controversial/edgy topic in a book - an author is not advocating it in real life. Unfortunately this is what I think holds YA fiction back - but fortunately we have authors like Freymann-Weyr who are brave enough to tell their characters' stories without compromise. Stay With Me is a heartbeaking and intense experience. I cannot wait to see what Freymann-Weyr has in store for us next!