What do you do when you find a stranger in your closet; particularly when she's surprised that you can even see her -- and she can disappear and reappear at whim? What if she then tells you that her body is actually in a coma on the other side of town? Should you have her see a psychiatrist or should you consult one yourself? Or do you take a chance and believe in her, and allow yourself to be swept up in an extraordinary adventure? This is the beginning of the dilemma that Arthur, a young San Francisco architect, is faced with when he discovers Lauren in his apartment. Arthur is the only man who can share Lauren's secret, the only one who can see her, hear her, and talk to her when no one else so much as senses her presence. So when doctors prepare to end Lauren's physical care -- which would destroy the magical bond she and Arthur cherish -- he must find a way to save her. For, after all, it is only her love that can save him. If Only It Were True is a heartwarming love story impossible to forget, an adventure that is by turns breathtaking and hilarious -- a captivating tale that evokes the essence of romance and our boundless capacity to believe. YA-First-time novelist Levy scored a bestseller with this book in his native France. It is a light, frothy tale of love conquering all, even a coma. Lauren Kline, a medical resident at San Francisco Memorial Hospital, is young, beautiful, and content with her life. Then a faulty steering mechanism in her old clunker of a car causes her to suffer head injuries in a shattering car accident. As she later explains, she could hear everything around her in the hospital recovery room, but could neither move, see, nor speak. She learns that she is languishing in a coma, having somehow survived being pronounced dead. Enter Arthur, an architect and partner in a restoration firm, who recently moved into an apartment and finds it comes equipped with an unexpected bonus-Lauren. Well, her spirit, anyway, since her body continues to reside in the very hospital in which she worked. She's not dead, so the apartment-dwelling Lauren is not actually a ghost, and she seems to have form and substance, but only Arthur can see and hear her. Readers learn that for months she has been psychically transporting her spirit all over the city until she finally comes back to her own apartment-now Arthur's. This feel-good story is an easy and engrossing read, and it should be particularly popular with teen girls. Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Arthur returns home to find a lovely young woman--whose body lies comatose in a hospital far away. Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks bought the rights. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. First-time French author Levy has managed to make the improbable seem possible. Lauren, a medical student at a San Francisco hospital, ends up in a coma after a car crash. Several months later Arthur, an architect, finds Lauren in the closet of his new apartment. She explains that this is her apartment and that she is sort of a ghost: her body is in the hospital and she has become separated from it. Lauren is as shocked as Arthur, who, after checking out her story, decides to take a leave from work so he can help her. They start to fall in love, and when Lauren's mother decides to take out her feeding tube, Arthur is forced to take action. With well-developed characters and a heartfelt journey into life's lessons, Levy creates an original love story that will appeal to fans of Nicholas Sparks and James Michael Pratt. And the movie rights have been sold to DreamWorks. Patty Engelmann Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved First novel, a bestseller in France at 160,000 copies: a variation on the love-after-death story that made the film Ghost so popular. ER intern Lauren Kline has a road accident, her old Triumph skidding on rain-greasy asphalt, and winds up back at her own San Francisco hospital in what looks like an irreversible grade-four coma. She lies abed for six months before her detached spirit, visiting the old apartment kept up by her mother, meets its new tenant. Arthur, an architect who has just been sent packing by his girlfriend, opens a closet one day, and finds Lauren’s spirit just sitting there. She’s been wandering around for the past half year, and she’s quite lonely because no one sees her. But Arthur does; he can even touch her. Gosh, what could possibly happen after this meet-cute? Well, it does. Arthur and Lauren become lovers in romantic San Francisco. But Arthur’s best friend, Paul, thinks his buddy is bonkers, especially when he gets roped into helping Arthur kidnap Lauren’s body from the hospital when her mother decides to pull the plug and let her die. (Presumably, this would not be good for Lauren’s new love-life.) The story's best scene is the hospital kidnapping, with Arthur in a doctor’s jacket being called to help out a dying diabetic. The res