Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Samantha Kingston dies in a car accident. She thinks that she will live forever- she is popular, has a great group of friends, and an attractive boyfriend. But she is dead. However, Samantha does not get to move on, but is stuck in the day that she died, and lives through it seven times. She finally has a chance to see that her decisions have consequences and affect other people, realizing in the long run that she should have been a better person. She has a chance to undo the wrongs and mistakes of her past, before she falls.

"Be honest: are you surprised that I didn't realize sooner? Are you surprised that it took me so long to even think the word- death? Dying? Dead? Do you think that i was being stupid? Naive? Try not to judge. Remember that we're the same, you and me. I thought I would live forever too."

"It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It's never occurred to me before; I've never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different."

"Not then, but afterward, I started to think about time, and how it keeps moving and draining and flowing forever forward, seconds into minutes into days into years, all of it leading to the same place, a current running forever in one direction. And we're all going and swimming as fast as we can, helping it along. My point is: maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll in it, let it slide like coins through your fingers. So much time you can waste it. But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know."