120 books

#21 of 2012: Before I Die by Jenny Downham

I researched about this book before I bought it and found a lot of rave reviews about how realistic and touching and enlightening and moving and all the sentimental stuff people say about novels which stories revolve around death. Naturally, I was drawn. Naturally, I was excited to read it. Until I started reading it. Allow me to say first that I find nothing problematic about it now that I’m re-browsing the pages; HOWEVER, it didn’t fall right into the space in my heart I allotted for it. Angst-y and unsteady characters usually are a surefire with me but Tessa, I wasn’t really feeling. Nor the things in her bucket list she ended up doing and achieving. (Some were too trivial, meriting a lot of SERIOUSLY that IS IN YOUR LIST WHAT ARE YOU TERMINALLY STUPID TOO from me) I get it that everything was contextualized and that Jenny Downham wanted it to be grounded on how a teenager would deal with the big C, but John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars has beaten her to it with me. That was probably why it will be okay with me if I don’t even read this before I die, pun intended.

Yay!s
-The would-be boyfriend of Tessa, the one she wished for, was named Adam. I love that name because it consists of too many meanings and references.
-Heart-tugging in a non-crappy way. Applause for Downham for not succumbing to the overly dramatic ways of writing a cancer novel.
-Tessa’s awesome little brother, Cal, who says a lot of hilarious things in place of his concern and love. For instance, he once told Tessa that “I hope you die while I’m at school and I hope it hurts.” By the end of the book, my heart broke for him when he said he didn’t want to say goodbye to his big sister.
-The way Tessa died. It was disturbing in a - I can’t believe I’m about to say this - beautiful way.

Boo!s
-TESSA DIED. I know, I know, this is how cancer novels go and it would be LAME with a capital L, A, M and E, but that would be SUCH A MOFO TWIST. And at the end of the novel, at that.
-Tessa’s best friend Zoey who appeared to me as “was never really a friend.” It’s sweet she wanted to help Tessa complete her bucket list, but it wasn’t when she did it only if there was something in it for her.
-I was going to put Tessa’s mother in the Yay!s because she was weird and I liked the way she was weird but NO WAY WOULD I WANT A MOTHER LIKE THAT. She was so estranged she couldn’t even get more attached to her dying daughter who needed her.