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    Before You Go
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    Before You Go
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    Before You Go
    Ebook183 pages1 hour

    Before You Go

    By James Preller

    3/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The summer before his senior year, Jude (yes, he's named after the Beatles song) gets his first job, falls in love for the first time, and starts to break away from his parents. Jude's house is kept dark, and no one talks much—it's been that way since his little sister drowned in a swimming pool seven years ago when Jude was supposed to be watching her.

    Now, Jude is finally, finally starting to live. Really live. And then, life spins out of control. Again.

    Acclaimed author James Preller explores life, death, love, faith, and resilience in his first young adult novel that will grip readers from the book's dramatic first few pages to its emotional end.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJul 17, 2012
    ISBN9781429955300
    Unavailable
    Before You Go
    Author

    James Preller

    James Preller is the author of the popular Jigsaw Jones mystery books, which have sold more than 10 million copies. He is also the author of Bystander, named a 2009 Junior Library Guild Selection, Six Innings, an ALA Notable Book, and the Scary Tales series of mystery-horror stories for children. James lives in Delmar, New York with his wife, three children, cats, and dog. Visit him at www.jamespreller.com.

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    Reviews for Before You Go

    3/5

    12 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Real and absorbing with well developed characters and a vivid setting.
    • 3/5
      The kind of book where you know what's coming from the first page (seriously, the prologue tells of a car crash in which a teen dies and two others are injured) and spend the next 100 pages hoping it won't really happen. The first half (or so) is about friendship and relationships and family; the second part is grief and loss and still friendship. A reasonably strong story for boys (and I'll be passing it along to the high school librarian, who was recently looking for fiction dealing with the death of a teen boy who wasn't the MC's boyfriend), though the writing is sometimes flat and out-of-touch-seeming. OTOH, a lot of the slang and some of the weird things characters say, the things they find funny, really do ring true to me as someone who grew up on Long Island, so there's that.
    • 3/5
      Before You Go is heartbreaking tale of grief and loss. Jude, the main character is still struggling to come to terms with the death of his younger sister six years previously. Lily, was 4 years old when she drowned in the family pool. Jude blames himself for the tragedy because he was supposed to be watching his sister even though he was only 9. The story opens at the scene of accident but doesn't reveal who dies until later in the story. This was a quick read, weighing in just shy of 200 pages, but powerful. I would recommend this to fans of realistic fiction.
    • 4/5
      This was a heartbreaking story about grief and loss told in an almost stream-of-consciousness style. It is Jude's story as he finds his first job at a beach concession stand, makes one of his co-workers his first girlfriend, and hangs with his friends. Jude is carrying a load of grief since his little sister Lily drowned in their family pool while he was supposed to be watching her. Of course, he was only nine at the time. He should never have been responsible for her. His parents deal with the grief in their own ways. His father is a high-tech jogger with all the appropriate gear. His mother has sort of withdrawn from life with a series of cluster headaches and lots of medications. Lily's room has been set aside as shrine and she is the elephant in the room. No one talks about her.Then tragedy strikes again. And this time, the blow might be too much for Jude to overcome. We watch him go through the many stages of grief especially focusing on anger and withdrawal from life. This one raised a personal chord for me as I lost a brother to a car accident when he was only twenty and I saw what it did to my family. So many of the things in this book were things I remember happening. This story is powerful, gritty, and heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful. I recommend it to thoughtful adolescents who want a sad book.
    • 4/5
      This is a great story about letting the past go and learning to move on with your life. When something tragic happens, we are changed inside and out. This story tells a tale of learning to become whole again.What I enjoyed most about this story are the characters. The growth and change in them is slowly built yet very appreciated by the reader. The struggle of Jude and what he faces leaves me heart broken. To carry such a weight on his shoulders is a lot for a kid. Jude did a great job in facing his past and wanting to make a change in his life.The plot of the book flowed nicely. While Jude is facing his past regrets, he is also falling in love. I like that the plot did not rush through the love but rather it grew with the characters. Both characters in love gave the same they need as well the time to learn. The plot also had many plot twist that kept me reading till the ned.There's no questions that I loved this love interest. Beautifully formed, the love that is there is the redemption. It eases the pain that held on to Jude for so long. To see him find love, to confess and face his haunting past, the love helps me through it.Before You Go is a life changing tale of forgiveness. Jude is an amazing well-written characters who growth is tremendous. Facing a dark past with a partner right next to you is what love is all about. Love fixes all things.
    • 2/5
      I have mixed feelings about this book. I liked it okay, but it just felt as if something was missing and I can’t quite put a finger on it. The writing is okay, and the characters relatable (though fairly cookie-cutter), I just didn’t fully connect with the story.Jude’s life is pretty uneventful. He and his parents have maneuvered in a fog for the last seven years — since his little sister drowned when Jude was supposed to be watching her. The summer before his senior year, Jude gets a job working at a burger joint on the beach. It’s there that he meets Becca and falls head over heels for her. As the summer drones on, Jude makes more friends and spends more time with Becca. It seems that life is finally looking up for him, until another accident happens that sends Jude into another tail-spin.As I said earlier, I didn’t find myself emotionally invested in the story. On one hand it made sense, since Jude himself is fairly emotionally unattached in the beginning, but I think I expected to grow closer to him, which I never did. When the second accident takes place, and Jude detaches himself again, I didn’t really feel a loss. I understood why he felt the way he did, I just didn’t feel it as deeply as I would have liked. All of the characters are fairly believable, though not very three-dimensional. The story itself is filled with a lot of emotional potential, it just left me feeling a little indifferent.All in all, the book has a descent story and familiar characters, but it just didn’t deliver for me.