Book 73: By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

As soon as I saw one of my facebook friends mention the book, “By the Time You Read This, I will be Dead” by Julie Anne Peters. I knew I had to read the book. While I’m glad that I read it I was left with the same feeling I had when I read Twilight. It wasn’t that good but I was pulled to read everything through and wanted to find out what happened.

The book drew me due to the content. It’s about Daelyn’s desire to commit suicide after a recent failed attempt. This time around she found a website called Through-the-light which helps teens to commit suicide. This site offers her methods of suicide, a forum to communicate about problems, and it also forces the person to wait the 23 days before they can commit suicide. So while she would antagonize about the wait, she meets Santana. It’s the first boy that has offered genuine friendship and yet she wants to keep him at a distance.

The biggest problem and the strength of the book were the characters. There were times when I could relate to Daelyn completely. I’ve been in her shoes and considered offing myself in a very serious way. I just never decided to drink bleach and pneumonia together thus becoming a mute who wears a neck brace. I can get where she would feel so alone and isolated and think the next world would be better. But there were times I just hated Daelyn. She was so resistant to thinking in any act of kindness is genuine and she would dwell on acts of bullying that happen years ago. Plus she was so cold and distant. Often she left a bitter taste in my mouth and I wanted to tell her that she’s partially to blame for the fact that she has no friends. She won’t trust ANYONE. Now Santana and Emily were so much more likeable. They were trying to reach out especially Santana. He would get shut down, glared at, and stabbed and he still tried to be friends with Daelyn. He also was completely okay with the fact she couldn’t talk and wore a neck brace. He didn’t really ask too many questions about it instead he just took it slow.

The other thing that I didn’t really like was the ambiguous ending. I prefer concrete endings. This one left things up to interpretation. I know which way I wanted things to happen.