Before I Die by Jenny Downham

When I picked this book off the school library shelf, the librarian warned me, "There's sex and drugs in it"; she went on to tell me that she wouldn't let just anyone read it, but also that she hadn't read it yet herself, but it had had good reviews.

Thus forewarned, I set about reading it on the tube on the way home. And barely a paragraph had gone by before Tessa, the narrator, had decided to lose her virginity, which, before the end of the chapter, had gone. However, that does not really do justice to this sensitively written book, which deals with death, and love, friendship and family.

Although Tessa's father hopes that Tessa will survive, that a cure might be found, it isn't, and she doesn't. She burns brightly, then dies, one, sentence, at, a, time. It is quite beautiful. So much of the writing sounds as if Jenny Downham must have experienced all the moments, senses, described by Tessa. But then, she wrote the book, so she hasn't.