Review: Before I Die by Jenny Downham

Before I Die by Jenny Downham
Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: David Fickling Books
ISBN: 9780385613460 (Hardback)

Tessa has just a few months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, she 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. 

I wish I had a boyfriend. I wish he lived in the wardrobe on a coat hanger. Whenever I wanted, I could get him out and he’d look at me the way boys do in films, as if I’m beautiful.

Jenny Downham starts the story with these lines and I was immediately hooked.

Tessa was 16 and she was dying of leukaemia. So she made a list of things she wanted to do before she dies and she intends on completing each one of them. However, the central theme of this book wasn’t about her heroic adventure while completing the list while making new friends, no, although the list was certainly part of the story.

It’s about Tessa, trying. Trying to live through her days the best way she knows how. In the book, she drove her best friend –and me– crazy with all the random things she like to say which seems nonsense on the surface and a bit annoying but then I realized that it was actually her way of trying to hold on to these moments in her life even though they are quickly slipping through her grip. When I realized that, it broke my heart. It really did.

One thing that captured my attention when I read this book was not the plot, but the author’s writing. I love Jenny Downham’s writing. Tessa's voice was strange and beautiful. And it made me wanted to read more, more and more.

I hide under my hat again, just for a bit, because I’m going to miss breathing. And talking. And windows. I’m going to miss cake. And fish. I like fish. I like their little mouths going, open, shut, open.

Another thing that I love about this book is the characters. I love her dad and I adore her little brother, Cal, who like to show her magic tricks and wanted to join the Magic Circle one day. Tessa’s dad on the other hand constantly worried about her and was scared out of his mind but he still gave her space to breathe, even lending her his support when she wanted to be famous – next on her list. He was unsure and sad and strong. I love him.

Dad, you played rounders with me, even though you hated it and wished I’d take up cricket. You learned how to keep a stamp collection because I wanted to know. For hours you sat in hospitals and never, not once, complained. You brushed my hair like a mother should. You gave up work for me, friends for me, four years of your life for me. You never moaned. Hardly ever. You let me have Adam.

You let me have my list. I was outrageous. Wanting, wanting so much. And you never said, ‘That’s enough. Stop now.’

There was one character that bothered me though - Tessa’s best friend, Zoey. I wish she was more involved in the second half of the story especially at the end.

But then, I was pretty distracted with the boy-next-door, Adam. Oh my goodness. He didn’t possess the drool-worthiness that almost always exist in the recent ya literature but he was definitely the sweetest bloke ever!

‘I love you,’ he whispers angrily into my neck. ‘It hurts more than anything ever has, but I do. So don’t you dare tell me I don’t. Don’t you ever say it again!’

Their love was sweet and quiet pain; warm and creeping cold that left tears in my eyes. I keep asking in my mind, ‘Why, why can’t they be together? Why can’t Tessa live?’ She wants to go to university, marries Adam and visit her father with her kids someday. "Why can't she have all that?" Their romance was sweet but I know the painful reality was not far behind.

The ending made me cry. It was really hard to read. Silent tears and heaving chest. I felt stabs of pain in my heart and a sense of helplessness as I sat there with Tessa. In Tessa. Waiting. Falling. Fading.

Overall, Before I Die by Jenny Downham was worth it. Grab a copy if you have a chance and read. This is a good book. It might worth your while too.

  

Review: Before I Fall - Lauren Oliver

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Young Adult Fiction

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton General Division Published 2010/07(UK)

ISBN:9780340980903 (Paper cover book) 

They say that when you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that's not how it happened for me. Sam Kingston is dead. Except she isn't. On a rainy February night, eighteen-year-old Sam is killed in a horrific car crash. But then the impossible happens: she wakes up in her own bed, on the morning of the day that she died. Forced to live over and over the last day of her life the drive to school, skipping class, the fateful party she desperately struggles to alter the outcome, but every morning she wakes up on the day of the crash. This is a story of a girl who dies young, but in the process learns how to live. And who falls in love... a little too late.

I bought this book on an impulse the other day. I walked uphill to a bookstore with my best friend late in the evening, under misty rain just to torture ourselves with the smell of new books, promising each other that we were there just to ‘look around’. Mission failed. We cracked under pressure.

I saw the new beautiful UK cover for Before I Fall and croaked. She saw a couple new psych self-help books and croaked. There goes our hundred dollars. Poof it went.

On to the review then. Well, I am still reeling from the effect this book had on me. It was a confusing feeling. A tinge of sadness, relief, a load of frustration, a swell of happiness. Letting go, letting go, letting go.

My first rule in reading a fiction book is I have to like the MC. At least to a certain extent. So I was frustrated with the main character in this story, Sam. My goodness, What. A. Bitch. I hated her at first. I didn’t understand how a person’s heart can be so vile and black. There were moments I just felt like giving up because I can’t stand being in her head, reading the inner thoughts of such a mean girl. When she died the first time around I felt sated, like the feeling you get after a full lunch in hot afternoons. My face muscles twitch in satisfaction. “There you go bitch, you deserved to die!! People like you are a waste of space.”

Yet, somehow, I can’t put the bloody book down. I needed to know. I needed to keep going and continue being soaked up in Oliver’s words. This woman is good, man.

But I’m not exaggerating, Oliver really made Sam a character you would love to hate and you will hate her. It wasn’t until later that I realized that making the readers hated the main character so early in the book was a deliberate move. Oliver had managed to make Sam transformed from this ugly thing into a beautiful person while avoiding the usual cheesiness of the typical made-for-tv/Disney movies. Bravo.

I came from hating her to caring about her and by the end, I love her. I love her courage, her fears and the abundance of love that sat heavy in her heart. Oh my, what a wondrous thing to be able to witness how much she'd change.

Speaking of love, I really love the intense friendship she shared with her three best friends. Some of their interactions were laugh out loud hilarious! Bitches that they were, but they were funny, loyal and they got each other’s back. It was not a perfect friendship but it was real.

And then there was one Kent McFuller - who wore bowler hat and drew weird cartoons and had a pair of green eyes the color of grass. Adorable, adorable, adorable. It was Sam’s thoughts and time spent with him that made me smile the most while reading this book.

This book is about second chances, even if it's just for a while. It's about making things right and if you have the chance to do so, you should. Because we made a lot of wrongs in our lives. Each of our word, actions and decisions matter and it can hurt people, scarring them for a long long time. But most of the time we don't even realize it.

This book frustrated me, made me laugh, broke me apart, made me goes awww, smile, cry cry cry and then some. Like I said, I’m still reeling from it.

But one thing is true: It’s one of my best reads so far and you, my dear need to read this book. When you’re ready, get your hands on it and open its pages and get lost in it. 

Ok, perhaps you should smell the book first. Books have good smell. Even the musty ones.

Recommended Reads:  Before I Die by Jenny Downham