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 runs out.Before I Die is the heartbreaking story of Tessa coming to terms with her own looming death from leukemia. Tessa is only 15-years-old and wants to complete her bucket list before dying. One of her goals is to fall in love, and fortunately finds this "love" in the boy next door, named Adam. The story is told in 1st person, so the reader gets great internal dialogue of how Tessa really feels about her mortality and what life will be like for her family and friends without her in it. This book tries to accomplish what I think "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green did much more successfully. The plot moves slow and some of Tessa's actions seem a bit far fetched and frankly outrageous. For example, when Tessa decides to throw all of her possessions including her TV out her bedroom window. That action paints her out to be self-centered and selfish. Tessa is a difficult character to connect with and understand.
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