Before I Die by Jenny Downham

David Fickling Books.

Tessa has just a few months to live.

Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, 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, her new boyfriend, all are painfully crystallized in the precious weeks before Tessa’s time finally runs out.

BEFORE I DIE is a brilliantly crafted novel, heart-breaking yet astonishingly life-affirming. It will take you to the very edge.

Sometimes a book will come along that moves me, really moves me. I’m an emotional person, so it’s (reasonably) easy to make me cry, and lots of books do, especially when the subject is around death. But to really, really move me is something different. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, The Timetraveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, The Love Verb by Jane Green, and now, Before I Die by Jenny Downham.

There’s no question how this novel is going to end. Before picking it up, you know Tessa is going to die, reading the first few chapters, it’s confirmed, but it’s hard to accept. I think when I started reading it, it made me NOT want to get caught up in the story too much. You don’t want to get close to someone you’re going to lose. But I got sucked into her story, and Tessa and her limited life. I wasn’t halfway through when I loved her.

I think my favourite character was her little brother. Their interactions are so vivid, and yet heart breaking.

The blurb on the front, from Heat magazine, says it’s a book that makes you happy you’re alive, and it really does. Tessa does things that we all want to do, and we all can do. It’s funny, I found myself wanting to be Tessa (obviously not in all ways), she’s liberated, and knows she HAS to do what she wants now, or never – how many of us do that? How much are we waiting to do the important things because we’re busy right now, and we think we’ve got forever (or a long time anyway)?

Predictably it’s sad, especially because she’s so young, and I’d grown so attached to her. I sobbed my heart out near the end (I had to take a break before I got to the end because I couldn’t read!).

This book was recommended to me by a friend who I think has really good taste in books – please trust my taste too, go buy this book, read it, love it, but make sure you’re at home when you finish it – you do not want to go through that in public!

by

Helen Jackson