By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters

By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters REVIEW

This book gets 5 Hearts

Book release date? January 2010

Source? ARC [advanced reader copy] supplied by author

What is the book about?

Daelyn Rice is broken beyond repair, and after a string of botched suicide attempts, she's determined to get her death right. She starts visiting a website for "completers" - www.through-the-light.com.

While she's on the site, Daelyn blogs about her life, uncovering a history of being bullied from kindergarten. When she's not on the web, Daelyn's at her private school, known as the freak who doesn't talk.

Then a boy named Santana begins to sit with her after school, while she's waiting for her parents to pick her up. Even though she makes it clear that she wants to be left alone, Santana won't give up. And it's too late for Daelyn to be letting people into her life. Isn't it?

National Book Award Finalist Julie Anne Peters shines a light on how bullying can push young people to the very edge.

• Thoughts
  I think this is one of the best books I have ever read. Julie had done a fantastic job on vividly describing Daelyn's brutal memories, which made the words just jump off the page! Julie had also made the characters as if she had described real people, unlike the very few authors who create flat 2-D characters who seem to have fake emotions. When I was reading this book, it took a lot of effort just to put it down. When I wasn't reading the book, I was trying to predict what will happen in the book next. For me, some books are totally easy to predict. This book, not so much, which is pretty good becase I LOVE unpredictable stories :) The characters had amazing dialouge. I could actually imagine a suicidal teenager saying what Daelyn was saying throughout the whole book, and Santana was just as good. I liked Santana's dialouge the most because his was funny and dorky-cute, not too bad-boy (don't get me wrong, I heart bad boys!)

Daelyn was also funny and awesome like Santana. She had a lot to say, even though she couldn't talk (you can find out why if you read this book!)

• One of my favorite parts from Daelyn: "Dad reaches over and cranks up the volume on the CD he's playing. It's techno, for God's sake. My stomach hurts from cramps anyway, but that music makes me want to hurl. I think he thinks it'll make him seem cool. News you can use, Dad. Losers aren't cool."

Santana was an interesting character. Like a lot of books, the main love interest for a girl is a bad boy. Well, not this book. Santana was geeky-cute, but not like a math geek kind of cute. He is hi-larious in some parts of the book. His relationship between him and his mother is another funny sight to see. They argue a lot, but his mom would love his annoying self anyways. Now I present to you one of my favorite quotes from Santana:

• "'I'm sorry, he's printed in green pen, 'I didn't know you couldn't talk. I just figured you had amazing self-control.'"

(Sorry if I quoted Santana wrong. I have no idea how to quote quotes.)

• I also loved the funny, awkward, sweet romance between Daelyn and Santana. Their times together was adorable! Daelyn would always try to figure out ways to escape their times together, but Santana would keep persisting on and on.

All in all, this was a DELIGHTFUL read that deserves 5 Hearts.

I hope you guys get to read this when you get the chance! Besides, if you're sad that this book isn't in stores yet, January 2010 isn't that far from now! When January 2010 comes, I beg of you, buy this book. It's awesome.

lucy