The Best Reader + TIME

Before I Die — Jenny Downham

This week's Guest Reviewer is Shona from Shona's Book Shelves.

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From Amazon.com...

"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 finally runs out."
I thought a lot since I completed reading this book. I could think straight only once I was done crying. Trust me, I cried so much that my sister thought something bad must have happened. When I told her it was the book that I had just finished, she refused to believe me, so I handed her the book. Now, I am waiting for when she is going to have her episode, so I can tell her that its not me, it’s the book. Jenny Downham’s Before I Die is the kind of story that I am sure is going to touch the lives of people who read it.
Tessa is going to die and you get to see her live the remaining days of her very short life, trying to fit in all the things she feels she must do before she says her final good-bye. She has made a list of To Do things. There are things in her list that any teenager is warned not to do, but she wants to do it and her reason is simple 'she is going to die’ and she needs to experience all that is worth living for.
The book very beautifully explains the pain felt by her father, who masks it by going in to denial about his child’s illness, trying to see if some newer therapy can work. A younger brother who feels may be she should hurry up and be done with it.

This book makes readers realize one thing, that life is precious filled with beautiful things, we don’t appreciate fully because we are too busy. Too busy to see the sun rise or sun set, too busy to appreciate the first rains, too busy to return a smile, too busy to have a life.
This book, according to me, needs to be read by all, no matter how old you are.

Keep box of tissues at hand. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
***************** Shona, thank you so much for such a wonderful review. I've never heard of this book and now can't wait to pick it up. Please share some book love and visit Shona at Shona's Book Shelves and view her original review.

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Before I Die — Jenny Downham + TIME