By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead


By: Julie Anne Peters
Reviewed by: Tahrima, 13
Rating: It was alright...


Daelyn Rice can’t be left alone. Following her most recent suicide attempt, her well-meaning parents have her on suicide watch. They follow her when she goes for walks, pick her up from school, and monitor her online computer use. Daelyn has found a way around them, though, with a website called Through-the-Light.com, which promises to evade detection by the kind of monitoring programs that her parents use. Through-the-Light also promises something else: to give users contemplating suicide a discussion forum, frank advice, and a countdown clock to their own date of death.

Daelyn is obsessed with suicide but just not sure which method will provide the best combination of minimal pain and maximum effectiveness. Her earlier attempts obviously didn’t work --- she’s still here, isn’t she? --- so she needs a better way. Through-the-Light gives her plenty of material to work with.

As Daelyn counts down the days to her appointed “Date of Determination,” she recalls the events that have led to her current state of despair and desperation. Daelyn, who is overweight, has been bullied her whole life, ranging from fat jokes to a sexual attack by a group of boys in a school bathroom. She has been physically and verbally abused at “fat camp,” made the object of cruel pranks at school, and ignored or pitied by teachers and school administrators.

Just one thing is getting in the way of Daelyn’s single-minded progress toward a successful suicide attempt: a boy named Santana. He’s kind of a pain, engaging her in ridiculous conversation when all she wants to do is escape into the pages of the latest romance novel. He’s also kind of weird --- he has a pet rat, for Pete’s sake --- and extremely persistent. It turns out that Santana has a secret of his own, one that might change Daelyn’s perspective on life --- and death.


Recommended to: teens