"10 Things to Do Before I Die" by Daniel Ehrenhaft could have been more than what it was.

When you are a teenager, life seems endless.  There are a million possibilities that stretch out before you.  You can do anything you want, be anything you want.  There is nothing holding you back.  Unless you are Ted Burger.  His day started out so normal: going to school, playing guitar, avoiding the girl he's not sure why he's dating, and then hanging with his two best friends at their favorite burger joint.  That's when things start going downhill, for both Ted, and the reader.


Ted is finding it hard to breathe, and we, the readers, are finding it hard to believe that no one in this young man's life stops for five seconds to help him calm down.  Everyone is just running about their lives, telling him it's going to be okay, but not pausing to show him that he's not actually dying (oops, spoiler alert).  A quick conversation with a nurse, who wants him to stick around for more tests, has him more nervous than calmed.  A phone call to the doctor father of a friend has him more confused than mollified.  And the internet (a teenager's home away from home) gives him the answer he's looking for: he will be dead in 24 hours.


His best friends latch onto this announcement from Ted like it's gospel, and a crazy night ensues, doing all the things Ted has ever wanted to do before he dies.  Granted, he does get to do some amazing things, like jamming on stage with his favorite band.  But the audience is dragged through a series of short interactions with the people in Ted's life, all of whom he seems to be trying to run away from, and the only one who is able to hold his attention, and could have possibly calmed him down and made him see what was really going on, was so caught up in the night that she hardly even questioned the story, which culminates in a stand off with the TSA as Ted is trying to hop a plane to Africa.


It's not hard to like Ted in the beginning.  He seems level headed and observant.  He's smart and kind, and he's great at the guitar.  He's the kind of guy I would have liked to be friends with in High School.  But he's kind of an idiot about his own health and how to deal with stressful situations.  His reaction to his medical problem seems disconnected with the early calm and steady Ted we are introduced to, and the fact that so many people just accepted the internet's prediction that he was about to die is either unrealistic, or a sad commentary on modern reliance on the internet.


For such a promising opening chapter, this book was sadly disappointing.  But I would be willing to give the author another chance.