Tessa has just a few months to live.

Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests and drugs with excruciating side-effects, Tessa compiles a list. It's her Before I Die list. And number one is sex. Starting tonight.

Released from the constraints of 'normal' life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. Her feelings, her relationships with her father and brother, her estranged mother, her best friend, and the powerful, bittersweet first love she finds with the boy next door - all are painfully yet beautifully crystallized in the precious weeks before Tessa's time finally runs out.

The intensely moving and uncompromisingly honest story of 16-year-old Tessa, who is dying of leukaemia. A word-of-mouth bestseller, and now a major film starring Twilight's Dakota Fanning.

About the Author

Jenny Downham was an actress for many years before concentrating on her writing full-time. She lives in London with her two sons.

Her debut novel Before I Die was critically acclaimed and was shortlisted for the 2007 Guardian Award and the 2008 Lancashire Children's Book of the Year, nominated for the 2008 Carnegie Medal and the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize, and won the 2008 Branford Boase Award.

Reviews
Dealing frankly with teenage life, Before I Die will be the year's most talked-about novel . . . Novels for young teenagers do not usually feature drugs and casual sex within the first 20-odd pages. 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. Jenny Downham's extraordinary first novel does both * The Sunday Times *
Downham's prose is brave and bare, her characters relentlessly realistic -- Dinah Hall * Sunday Telegraph *
Destined to drive hundreds of thousands of readers to tears and to swift injunctions to all their friends to read it * Observer *
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. 5 stars -- Jo Hoare * Heat *
A work of great humanity and profound empathy. I defy anyone not to cry reading this book * Daily Express *



Book Information
ISBN 9781849921381
Author Jenny Downham
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint David Fickling Books
Publisher Penguin Random House Children's UK
Weight(grams) 234g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 20mm