I've never cried at a movie and I can only think of 2 books that have ever made me cry. I can now bump that number up to 3. If you haven't read Deadline by Chris Crutcher and want to, stop reading here, because I'm totally spoiling the ending here.

When I first picked up Deadline, I thought it would be a good book about a guy living through his senior year of high school thinking that he would die in a year from the terminal illness that he discovered he had at the beginning of the book. And of course, near the end just when you thought he would die, a miracle cure would be found or he would find out that the doctors got the blood samples mixed up and that the guy never actually had the illness to begin with. The guy will live on into the cliche happily-ever-after.

But no.

Instead, Crutcher spends over 300 pages getting you to know this cool little midget of an 18 year old. Those entire first 300+ pages are told in first person from the sick guy's point of view. You see his determination in making his last year the best yet, his confusion about when to tell poeple, especially his family, about his illness, his excitement when he finally gets the guts to talk to the girl of his dreams, and his regret when he falls in love with her.

And then BAM! Next thing you know, you've passed those first 300 pages and are at the epilogue, where his brother, who was in the same grade, is reading something this guy wrote before he died, at his senior graduation, because our beloved main character managed to die only one week before.

I love this book and I hate this book and I love this book even more because I hate this book. I can't even explain it to you. But you've got to appreciate those books that touch you so much that you cry. You just gotta.