The newly released feature film Now Is Good, starring Dakota Fanning, is based on Jenny Downham's intensely moving novel. 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 runs out.Ī Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book of the YearĪn ALA-YALSA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults Of “normal” life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, and drugs with excruciating side effects, Tessa compiles a list. A book that will make you happy to be alive.For the many readers who love The Fault in Our Stars, this is the story of a girl who is determined to live, love, and to write her own ending before her time is finally up. It's a novel that won't fail to touch those who read it, and despite the melancholy subject matter it manages to be hugely life-affirming. A book that will make you happy to be alive. For everyone, it is a reminder to value the people that matter, seize the moment, wish with courage, adventure with relish, even if it's just a trip to the swimming pool, drinking hot chocolate or driving down a dual carriageway in the rain Guardian A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. It deals with death, but it's a hymn to life The Irish Times Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of Before I Die by Jenny Downham. It's about love and friendship and family. I defy anyone not to cry reading this book Daily Expressĭownham's prose is brave and bare, her characters relentlessly realistic Sunday Telegraph Tough but tender, angry rather than resigned, Tessa is an appealing heroine whose company is never less than bracing IndependentĪ work of great humanity and profound empathy.

Writing about dying children can sometimes seem too easy a target for instant emotion but always does much better than that Independentĭestined to drive hundreds of thousands of readers to tears and to swift injunctions to all their friends to read it Observer Jenny Downham's extraordinary first novel does both The Sunday Timesīefore I Die is so real, so sad, so true - and I so wish I'd written it myself Jacqueline Wilson 'Before I Die is a raw, gritty portrayal of what it's really like to die' ThePinkElephant Tue 10.00 EDT Before I Die was said to be an insightful, deeply moving read, and I was. But most books for teenagers will not leave an adult reader's eyes so blurry with tears that it's hard to see the final chapters. Novels for young teenagers do not usually feature drugs and casual sex within the first 20-odd pages.

Before i die by jenny downham