Jenny Downham - Before l Die

Started: 25th November 2010

Finished: 27th November 2010

Rating : 5/5

The Blurb:

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, heartbreaking yet astonishingly life-affirming. It will take you to the very edge.

My Review:

On the front cover it says 'A book that will make you happy to be alive'. This book for me did exactly this and more, it made me appreciate everything in my life which you sometimes don't always realise how lucky you are to have.

Tessa is a very unique person which Jenny Downham couldn't have made any more real, her emotions, her character, her actions all feel so real when your reading this book. Any author who writes a book on this topic needs to find real emotions and a connect to the story to make this story and everything in it feel real. Without this the reader would struggle to feel the emotion which is needed to come across in this sort of story. Jenny wrote this story in a way l didn't think was possible unless you went through this sort of thing yourself.

Jenny Downham has managed to make a topic which is a very difficult to write about written with so much heartfelt emotion.

Some lovely lines in this book which along with Tessa will make it impossible for any reader to not feel some sort of empathy to the story.

This book will stay with me for a long time and so will Tessa.