No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end.
They Both Die At The End
by Adam Silvera
Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy
About: Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but they're about to spend the last day of their lives together and they have to make it count. In a world where death is forewarned (with a courteous 24hr heads up) you might not know how or precisely when you'll die but knowing it will happen changes how you spend that last day in unexpected ways.
The Good
The concept is so gripping. The story is told through a single day in several different viewpoints (Mateo and Rufus being the main ones) and every minute of it you feel on edge because you know death haunts the pages. It's obviously loaded with emotion and made me feel both devastated and hopeful. I loved the two main characters, especially how they connected with others, and I felt fully invested in finding out the morbid how of it all. And even that you know that 'they both die at the end,' the ending was so clever and perfect - which is hard to pull off when the set up was this good.
The Bad
This is a YA book so I do understand the need for the themes it explores and how it explores them. That said, it did feel very repetitive and sometimes forced. Mateo's journey to bravery, Rufus letting go of his anger, them both feeling as though the other is making them live more than they lived before: it's very heavy handed in messaging. Being in the first person they repeat these feelings over and over again and even express it through dialogue quite regularly. I did like a lot of the dialogue and I thought the writing was great, but I didn't like the repetitiveness of some of it which maybe I wouldn't have noticed if I was the age group intended.
The Somewhat Iffy
So the narrative does a very nice thing of connecting seemingly unconnected characters through this 24hr period (and beyond as others have longer history or moments that they were unaware of prior to this day). However, this becomes so exaggerated as to be unbelievable at times. I do like this technique overall but I did feel it was overdone in places. And I wish we got to learn more about Death Cast - its origin, how it works, who's behind it... It wouldn't have been right perhaps for the style and intent of this book, but man I wanted to know more.
Overall
A beautiful, heartfelt and gripping read. I don't know how much of a re-read value it might have but I absolutely enjoyed reading (and cried often). It felt reminiscent of a Matt Haig novel for a YA audience.
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