By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead/Julie Anne Peters Suicide is a topic of immense fascination to me, but I just wasn't satisfied by the way this book was written. This story felt very contrived at most points.
 
Daelyn is fifteen years old and planning her third attempt at suicide, using a website that has her wait twenty-three days. I'm really not sure what this website was supposed to be, why 23 days was picked, or what happened to other users, but it seemed like a way to show how Daelyn was at the point where she was pretty selfish and felt like only the things that happened to her matter.
 
The methodical way she went through ways she could commit suicide was intriguing and shed light on her character. Hearing about her past through her posting on the forums was revealing as to her motivations and feelings, but I still just wasn't able to connect with her.
 
Santana and Emily were the only characters I really liked in this story. Santana ad his rat were a lot of fun, but I really didn't understand their fascination with a girl who wouldn't speak. It was very contrived. Had she given him any bones, I would have appreciated their budding friendship, but I just don't understand his motivations. Emily, on the other hand, was a breath of fresh air and I think she could do more for Daelyn than Daelyn for her.
 
In a way, this reminded me of a version of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, except that this book would only resonate with younger readers and Speak is timeless.
 
I won't talk about my frustration with the ending.
 
I recommend this for younger readers, but for me this just felt a bit too intentional. ( )

I enjoyed it for a quick and easy book, but didn’t care for Santago (Can’t remember how to spell the name). He just seemed creepy and pushy. I wish there were more of Emily instead. ( )

This book was a very intense look at what goes on in the mind of someone who has had non-fatal suicide attempts and is looking to try again. She is on an anonymous board where people discuss the whys and the hows behind these attempts. Along the way, we see tiny glimmers of hope through two possible attempts at friendships, though she mostly denies these.
The only reason I gave this book 4 stars, and why I wish half stars existed, is the end. I did not want another open ended is there hope or is there not story about suicide. We already get too many of these as the reader. I just wanted to know what decision she made. ( )

This book is listed as a Young Adult read but I believe that is a topic that needs to be addressed to the older youths or perhaps to families. It is an inner dialouge on the part of the main character as the people around her try to encourage her to open up to them and explain herself. It completes the book by asking actual thought provoking discussion questions of the readers. It has what seems to me like a curriculum to follow and might be taught in late High School or at an early college level. It needs to be read by a group that is mature enough to handle the content. It adresses not only bullying, but abuses of several types when Daelyn is blogging and reading other people's posts and why they are making the choices they are. My husband and I actually "argued" this book. I found it interesting and thought provoking and a way to help youths understand that the choices they make effect more than just them, but also the people around them,and that there are people out there fighting to stay alive as she meets Santana, and that if she ends her life because people bully her that all they will do is find someone new to bully and that it is better to be a friend to others that are being bullied like Emily than to leave them feeling all alone like she felt. He said it sounded like a suicide guide because it talks about ways to commit suicide, the pain level of that way to go, how long it takes to go in that way, and what happens if you do it wrong what the result is, such as comas, vegetative states, paralysis, and in Daelyn's case loss of speech. (We don't know what she has done until closer to the end of the book.) I wanted to keep reading and was very angry at the end of her 23 days and how it...............exactly! ( )

Final abierto, maldita sea, maldita imaginación, buenísimo el libro.

¿Puede ser demasiado tarde para cambiar?
Después de leer la sinopsis ¿No es lo que se les viene ala cabeza? Este libro es más que una historia de amor en un momento inoportuno, ya que nuestra protagonista planea su muerte.

El libro está narrado en primera persona, así que tenemos de primera mano la vida de Daelyn, quizá puedas pensar que es un poco aburrido, con sus monólogos interiores y conflictos existencialistas, la verdad es que no. Obviamente nos va narrando... more ( )