STAY by Deb Caletti

RATING : 5 Stars

I sat down to type out my review but I was completely out of words to describe the poignancy and beauty of Stay by Deb Caletti. Caletti makes the characters incredibly real and relatable. Very rarely I come across a book that strikes a chord within me. This book will Stay with me forever and definitely will go to the top tier of my favorite books. I let Stay to saturate in me and devoured every part of it.  

What do you call an intimate relationship? - Intense? but do you know that it can sometimes  turn out to Obsession? Well.. Stay is about abusive relationship between Clara and Christian.  Often we relate this type of  relationship as physically abusive, but Caletti brings out that it can also be purely Emotional.

It starts out with Clara and her father moving to a small seaside town to escape her stalker ex-boyfriend. As the story is said in retrospect, we could look through Clara's life at the time of her relationship with Christian. Clara meets Christian across a crowded basketball game. Things between them escalates into Obsession quickly. Christian is the kind of a guy who thinks he is being protective, he is but he isn't. Do you get what I mean? Protectiveness turns more like controlling. Clara is terrified of Christian and tries to escape. Furthermore Clara meets interesting people at the seaside town and their bond with Clara is brilliantly explained.  

What makes this novel endearing? - It's Bobby Oates, Clara's Father and of course the footnotes. Footnotes are funny and I loved it. The openness between Father-Daughter relationship and their witty-banters are spectacular. I wish I had such an awesome relationship with my Father too.. Caletti's writing style is fantastic and has a poetic flow to it. I would like to quote a few. 

" We can't get so wrapped up in our own misconceptions that we miss the simple beauty of the truth."

" Fate is a shape-shifter. It is the kindest and most generous entity imaginable, laying out more goodness than a person deserves, and then it shrinks and curls and forms into something grotesque. You think something is one thing, but then it´s another."

I felt Clara's relationship with Finn was rushed. That was the only qualm . Nevertheless, this book took me on an emotional roller coaster. Are you the kind of a person who would like to sit by the sea with the lapping and sloshing of water and enjoy a good book? Then Stay is for you. I warn you it's not an easy beach read. 

I know it's not more of a review but I can't go any further. It is a poignant novel. Without a doubt I would recommend Stay by Deb Caletti to anyone, particularly teen girls.