Before I Fall

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

"If screaming were a feeling it would be this... did I deserve to die like that?"

Samantha Kingston is a mean girl. She's popular at her high school, which means that she and her mean friends get away with terrorizing everybody else and don't think much of it, if at all. Sam wakes up on Cupid Day and rides to school with her friends as usual. She's thinking about going all the way with her boyfriend at a party that night, though she's still a little unsure. Things don't go exactly as planned and, while leaving the party with her friends, Sam is killed in a car accident. She's forced to relive the last day of her life seven times, gradually realizing the effects of her behavior on others.

Before I Fall isn't a story I would normally read but I liked that the author refers to Plato's philosophy and depicts Sam discovering ethics and becoming a deeper person in the afterlife. There is a whole lot of swearing, underage drinking, smoking and drug use, references to and some depictions of hooking up (and a teen hooks up with an adult) so it's a pretty racy addition to the list of dead narrator teen fiction like If I Stay by Gayle Forman or The Everafter by Amy Huntley. However, I think all of these elements just illustrate how bad things are in Sam's life before she begins to figure things out in death- Before I Fall is, above all else, a book about the importance of how we treat others and our awareness of this treatment. 

Teens' Top Ten is a "teen choice" list, where teens nominate and choose their favorite books of the previous year. Nominators are members of teen book groups in sixteen school and public libraries around the country. If you're between the ages of twelve and eighteen, vote for your favorite nominee(s) online; the winners will be announced during Teen Read Week.