Details
Rent Before I Die
Author:
Format: Quality Paperback, Unabridged-CD
Publisher: David Fickling Books
Published: May 2009
Genre: Children & Young Adults Fiction - Social Issues - Death & Dying
Retail Price: $14.00
Pages: 336
Synopsis
This intensely moving story is now available in paperback.
Tessa has just months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, and 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, and her new boyfriend, are all painfully crystallized in the precious weeks before Tessa's time finally runs out.
A Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book of the Year
A Booklist Editors' Choice
A Book Sense Children's Pick
A Kirkus Reviews Editors' Choice
A Publishers Weekly Flying Start Author
An ALA-YALSA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults
Reviews
Tessa is a 16 year old girl who is dying. She has cancer. Cancer....it is amazing how one word can say so much. This book speaks volumes. The emotional slap that you receive on every page is sometimes too much to bear and you have to set the book down and walk away for a while. There is the anger from Tessa, the desperation from her father, the denial from her brother, the love from Adam, and the almost mean spirited fragility from her friend Zoey. You connect with each of these emotions and at times you feel drained. Make sure that you have plenty of Kleenex on hand before beginning, but this book is definitely worth the time. It will make you re-evaluate life and maybe, just maybe, not take it for granted quite as much.