tiny pink books

Deadline by Chris Crutcher
Greenwillow Books, 2007

What if you found out you only had a year to live?  In Deadline, 18-year-old Ben Wolf discovers, at the start of his senior year, that he has a terminal disease that will likely kill him within a year.  Forgoing treatment with iffy promises, Wolf instead chooses not to tell his friends and family and decides to live a lifetime in his last year, challenging himself in sports, relationships and school.  Dying becomes more complicated, however, as Wolf’s relationships shift and change, making him engage with the world around him like he never has before.

What I liked about Deadline was that it was a fairly smart book that really captured a complex dilemma.  The concept of life and its meaning run very central to the plot and, written in a very honest, down to earth teenage boy perspective.  To top things off, Deadline has some of the best sports scenes that I’ve read in a long time.  Some of the football games were absolutely riveting…and that’s coming from someone who has never actually watched a full football game!

I listened to the audiobook version of Deadline, but I’d recommend the paper copy (nothing against the audio, I just think this type of book would have read better internally).

Feed for this entry. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.