Good vs. Super Awesome

A good friend will think of you with a smile when they see something that would make you laugh your ass off.

A Super Awesome friend sends you this:

Before I Fall - Lauren Oliver

Before I Fall
By Lauren Oliver

Well I finally got with the program, joined in with the boatloads of brilliant people and read Before I Fall.  Yes this was another book that I finished, slapped my forehead, and said "why the heck did I wait so long to read this!"  I have no reasonable answer to this question.  But it is done now and wow.

I loved this book.  I remember reading a review...so long ago that I can't remember where I read it...and it said that Oliver did teen angst right.  I have to agree.  Not only does she get it right but she makes you wait for it, earn it, until just when you start to doubt it is going to happen.  Oliver writes such a believable voice of a teenager that it was so easy to jump into the book and live in the story.  It wad equally heartbreaking, funny and honest.

"The crowd is thinning as people take off, but it's still hard to move.  Lindsay keeps calling out, "Excuse me, excuse me, move it, feminine emergency!"  Years ago we discovered at an under-eighteen concert in Poughkeepsie that nothing clears people faster than referencing a feminine emergency.  It's like people think they'll catch it"
-page 74

Before I Fall is about a girl named Sam who goes through a fairly typical day in the life of a popular high school student and then...well...she dies.  She dies and then wakes up again the next day only it is the day before, it is the day she dies and she goes through the day again.  She goes through the day seven times but no one time is the same.  The things she learns, about the day and about herself, are heartbreaking and eyeopening.  It was intense.  I continued to find myself putting the book down at the end of a chapter (the end of a day) and needing to take a break.  It made me realize how much it was really affecting me.  It was almost as if I was holding my breath, my body tense in anticipation of the moment the day ended.

**Source: purchased with my own sweet loot.