Before I Die
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4.2 • 9 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
For the many readers who love The Fault in Our Stars, this is the story of a girl who is determined to live, love, and to write her own ending before her time is finally up.
Tessa has just months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, and drugs with excruciating side effects, Tessa compiles a list. It’s her To Do Before I Die list. And number one is Sex. Released from the constraints
of “normal” life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. Tessa’s feelings, her relationships with her father and brother, her estranged mother, her best friend, and her new boyfriend, are all painfully crystallized in the precious weeks before Tessa’s time runs out.
A Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book of the Year
A Booklist Editors’ Choice
A Book Sense Children’s Pick
A Kirkus Reviews Editors’ Choice
A Publishers Weekly Flying Start Author
An ALA-YALSA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults
The newly released feature film Now Is Good, starring Dakota Fanning, is based on Jenny Downham's intensely moving novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The eloquent dying teen can seem a staple of the YA novel, but this British debut completely breaks the mold.Downham holds nothing back in her wrenching and exceptionally vibrant story about a 16-year-old girl with leukemia determined to do 10 things before her imminent death (have sex, commit a crime, fall in love); although her rage feels palpable, she has decided to spend her remaining time living instead of dying. The chronicling of Tessa's slow decline has the immediacy of an audio journal painful, honest first-person descriptions almost trap the audience inside Tessa's head. She alternates erratically but realistically between emotions, and the effect is staggering. One scene, for example, begins with Tessa's younger brother burying a dead bird, the boy next door helping him in an effort to impress Tessa: at first Tessa is touched, then "There's earth on my head. I'm cold.... I try and focus on good things, but it's so hard to scramble out." Although the internal monologues wield undeniable power, some of the most dramatic scenes in the book involve Tessa's friends and familyher father's efforts to remain strong despite grief; her boyfriend's love for her; her younger brother's inability to grasp the gravity of his sister's condition (after a fight he hisses, "I hope you die while I'm at school! And I hope it bloody hurts"). Downham's writing is shockingly straightforward, and she cushions nothing for readers. In laying out so bald a story she evokes an extraordinary range of emotions, exorcised in a fiercely cathartic ending. Ages 14-up.
Customer Reviews
Amazing.
I read this book when I was about 19 and it is amazing how much of my experiences and feelings I could relate to Tessa. Definitely a good book. It's my all time fav. I read it all the time.