Great tearjerker you may have missed

There are many books about teenagers dealing with a terminal illness; it's a popular subgenre of teen fiction. Very few of them will have as great an impact on you as Before I Die by Jenny Downham. Critics loved it: A Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book of the Year A Booklist Editors’ Choice A Book Sense Children’s Pick A Kirkus Reviews Editors’ Choice and an ALA-YALSA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults. But I think the New York Times Review of Books captured it best: "a book, a first novel no less, about a 16-year-old girl dying of leukemia. This may sound too depressing for words, but it is only one indication of the inspired originality of Before I Die, by Jenny Downham, that the reader can finish its last pages feeling thrillingly alive…All the way through, Downham gives Tessa the power to tell her own truth, to represent her imperfect, all-too-human self, as well as the imperfect, all-too-human selves of those around her, without regard to the opinions and values of others. The result is as honest and indelible a portrait of a young adult at risk—no, beyond risk—as one is likely to find in recent literature. One of the more surprising revelations to be found in Before I Die is that it's a "young adult novel" only in the sense that readers Tessa's age are perhaps the ideal audience for a true story about death. I don't care how old you are. This book will not leave you.."