If I Stay
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40 free If I Stay trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Gayle Forman's novel puts an impossible question to a teenage cellist. After a car crash, Mia Hall lies in a coma, watching her relatives and friends gather at the hospital while she weighs up whether to wake. The story moves between that long vigil and the memories that made her who she is, which is why readers tend to remember its small details as clearly as its ending. This quiz follows the book from the family breakfast to the final page. It covers Mia, her boyfriend Adam and her best friend Kim, her parents and little brother Teddy, the grandparents who keep watch, and the music that runs through every chapter. A few questions take in the sequel, the author and the film adaptation. It suits anyone who has just finished the novel, a class or book club working through it, and fans of the film who want to see how much of the original they remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01How does the friendship between Mia Hall and Kim Schein begin in middle school in If I Stay?
A fistfight
A fistfight in the schoolyard ended with both girls laughing at their bruises. They had resented being lumped together as the quiet, dark-haired, arty ones.
Q 02In If I Stay, cellist Mia Hall is waiting to hear from which performing arts school after a five-piece audition?
Juilliard
Juilliard would put Mia a whole country away from her boyfriend, whose band is taking off at home. That looming separation strains the couple in the months before the crash.
Q 03Which famous cellist's concert do Mia Hall and Adam Wilde attend on their first date in If I Stay?
Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Ma is the name Adam first drops at school to strike up a conversation with Mia. Months later he turns up with spare tickets, and the two share a first kiss after the concert.
Q 04Which composer does Adam Wilde dress up as for Halloween, spending $100 on the costume, in If I Stay?
Mozart
Mozart was Adam's nod to Mia's classical world. She answered by going to his Halloween gig in an outfit built partly from clothes her mother wore at her age.
Q 05Which music genre do the fair-haired parents of classical cellist Mia Hall love in If I Stay?
Punk rock
Punk rock ran through the whole household, which left dark-haired Mia wondering whether she had been switched at birth. Her parents still made sure she could study the cello privately.
Q 06Which actress plays cellist Mia Hall in the 2014 film adaptation of Gayle Forman's novel If I Stay?
Chloë Grace Moretz
Chloë Grace Moretz secured the part in January 2013. Dakota Fanning had been in talks in 2010 but turned the role down to finish her last year of high school.
Q 07Which visitor weeps at comatose Mia Hall's bedside in If I Stay and says it is all right if she goes?
Her grandfather
Her grandfather, a man of few words, says he wants her to stay but will understand if she cannot. He is the first person to acknowledge how hard staying would be.
Q 08Gayle Forman's If I Stay is set in which US state, where Mia Hall's rescue helicopter flies past Mount Hood?
Oregon
Oregon is home to Mia's small town. The helicopter is carrying her to a bigger hospital in the state's largest city, where her boyfriend's band is due to play that night.
Q 09Adam Wilde's band is called Willamette Stone in the film of If I Stay, but what is it called in the novel?
Shooting Star
Shooting Star is on the rise around the Northwest, opening for a bigger indie act the night before the crash. That success is what would keep Adam on the west coast.
Q 10What closes school on the morning of the crash in If I Stay, giving the Hall family a day off together?
A snowfall
A snowfall is unusual enough in Mia's part of the Northwest to shut the schools. Her mother skips work too, and the family sets out to visit friends.
Q 11Roughly how much time does the present-day story of If I Stay cover, from breakfast to Mia Hall's decision?
One day
One day is all it takes: the crash comes in the morning and Mia decides early the next. Flashbacks fill in years of family life, friendship and first love along the way.
Q 12At the end of If I Stay, how does Mia Hall signal to her boyfriend that she has chosen to live?
Squeezes his hand
Mia squeezes his hand after he plays her cello music through headphones, and the novel ends as he gasps her name. Rejoining her body brings a blinding flash of pain.
Q 13Which sequel to Gayle Forman's If I Stay picks up the story years later from boyfriend Adam Wilde's point of view?
Where She Went
Q 21At her brother Teddy's birth in If I Stay, what does Mia Hall do as the first person he ever sees?
Cuts the cord
Mia cuts the cord at the birthing center, hours after her mother insisted on going holiday shopping despite her waters breaking. Her mother later jokes that Teddy imprinted on his sister.
Q 22Kim Schein, Mia Hall's best friend in If I Stay, is serious about which art form the way Mia is about cello?
Photography
Photography once took Kim up in a helicopter over Mount St. Helens with her uncle. The trip made her queasy, a memory that returns to Mia during her own airlift.
Q 23Who stages an impromptu concert outside intensive care in If I Stay so Adam Wilde can slip in to see Mia?
Brooke Vega
Where She Went finds the couple long since split, Mia having ended things when she left to study music. The sequel follows their reunion over a single night in New York.
Q 14What kind of vehicle smashes into the passenger side of the Hall family's old Buick in If I Stay?
A pickup truck
A pickup truck swerved into them on the wintry road. Its driver, Mr. Dunlap, came away with only minor injuries, and Mia later wonders how much his life has changed.
Q 15Which composer's Cello Sonata No. 3 is playing on the car radio when the crash happens in If I Stay?
Beethoven
Beethoven is somehow still playing when Mia finds herself standing outside the wreck. To calm down she fingers the notes in the air, practising without an instrument.
Q 16Gran, Mia Hall's grandmother in If I Stay, says birds she sees are dead relatives visiting as what kind of being?
Angels
Angels are how Gran makes sense of loss. During the hospital vigil she spots a crossbill, rare for the area, and takes it for her late sister Glo come to support Mia.
Q 17With a second child on the way, Denny Hall goes back to school to teach which subject in If I Stay?
English
English classes at a middle school replaced touring with his band. He also traded his old wardrobe for a 1950s look, complete with bow ties, wingtip shoes and a pipe.
Q 18What job does Mia's mother Kat Hall skip on the morning of the crash in If I Stay?
Travel agent
Travel agent is Kat's day job, though she met Mia's father in her early twenties through the local music scene. She stays home so the whole family can be together.
Q 19In which language does Kim Schein pray for her injured best friend in the hospital chapel in If I Stay?
Hebrew
Hebrew comes to Kim when she slips away from her sobbing mother to find the chapel. Mia has shared Shabbat dinners with the Scheins, whose faith shapes much of Kim's life.
Q 20Whose arrival at the city hospital makes Mia Hall realise that her little brother Teddy has died in If I Stay?
Willow
Willow is a nurse at the local hospital, where Mia had pictured her looking after Teddy. Seeing her arrive in the city tells Mia that her brother no longer needs anyone at his side.
Brooke Vega fronts the indie band that Adam's group was due to open for that night. Her diversion works for a moment, but security escorts Adam out soon after he reaches Mia's room.
Q 24What everyday skill does Denny Hall finally learn in If I Stay once his wife is pregnant with their son Teddy?
Drive a car
Learning to drive a car ended Denny's years of cycling everywhere without even holding a licence. Kat insisted on it before the baby arrived.
Q 25In which Canadian city was the film of If I Stay shot, with a local band appearing as Adam Wilde's group?
Vancouver
Vancouver is where the cameras started rolling at the end of October 2013. Alternative band Hawking, based in the city, turn up on screen several times as Adam's bandmates.
Q 26Which piece of jewellery makes Mia Hall realise the body in the wrecked car is her own in If I Stay?
A silver bracelet
A silver bracelet on the wrist gives it away, just as Mia reaches in thinking she is pulling her little brother out. She pinches herself and feels nothing.
Q 27At the Halls' Labor Day party in If I Stay, what does Mia reluctantly do after insisting the styles would clash?
Joins the guitar jam
Mia joins the guitar jam on her cello, playing along with her father and Adam. She is surprised by how good the cello sounds beside the other strings.
Q 28Tips from which job does Adam Wilde save for two weeks to buy the first-date concert tickets in If I Stay?
Pizza delivery
Pizza delivery paid for the evening, as Adam admits once the concert is over. Mia had not even been sure it counted as a date when she agreed to come.
Q 29In which city does Mia Hall play her conservatory audition in If I Stay, escorted by Gramps after Gran sprains an ankle?
San Francisco
San Francisco gave the pair a weekend of shopping and dining once the audition was done. Gramps ended the trip with a tight hug in place of his usual handshake.
Q 30If I Stay author Gayle Forman began her career writing about young people's concerns for which magazine?
Seventeen
Seventeen gave Forman her start, and an article she wrote for it became the basis of her first young adult novel, Sisters in Sanity.