They Both Die at the End

I think we all know what to expect from a book entitled They Both Die at the End; nevertheless, reading the actual novel was an anxious experience: my eyes were glued to every page, waiting for the ball to drop, for something terrifying to happen. You expect the book to be sad, to be heartbreaking and depressing. What you don’t expect is to smile, to laugh, and to fall in love – to feel such happiness, even amidst such pain. When a novel brings out these intense, warring emotions within you, that’s when you know you are reading an Adam Silvera novel.

They Both Die at the End, despite being a slightly morbid novel, is also an incredibly important one. The message the novel promotes is something that will relate to readers of all ages, but will undoubtedly stick with the young. It’s a book about living life to the fullest, which isn’t an especially unique sentiment – it’s rather something you would see on a cat poster or read in a self-help book – but Silvera’s distinctive twist on the adage is what makes his novel so powerful.

Imagine receiving a call at midnight telling you that you are going to die today. You are not told the specifics: you don’t know what time, how, or even who by – all you know is that today is your last day. Many of you will be angry and sad and hurt – and many more of us will feel guilty for a life unspent. We all have our insecurities and fears; Silvera’s novel tries to teach us to push past the fear and become the person we were always meant to be.

That being said, the novel doesn’t just tell you to go out there and put yourself in uncomfortable positions, it shows you through the power of friendship and family and making your own family, the ways in which we can live, not just survive.

Mateo is the character who is just trying to survive: he spends his days trapped in his apartment with his single father (who is currently in a coma), and only ventures out to see his best friend and her baby girl. Mateo is frightened of the outside world, although he’s not agoraphobic; more, he is afraid of putting himself out there for fear of being humiliated or rejected. It’s something we can all empathise with.

Rufus, on the other hand, is an angry boy, still reeling from the loss of his entire family months ago, and the recent breakup with his girlfriend. When we meet him, he is beating up his girlfriend’s new boyfriend when he gets the call. Unlike Mateo, Rufus is not scared: he wants to spend his Last Day with no fear, experiencing anything and everything he possibly can before he goes. I think we would all benefit from a Rufus in our lives.

Silvera’s writing, as always, is beautiful and haunting and makes you feel. Although I didn’t cry as much as I did when I read More Happy Than Not, They Both Die at the End will weigh on you for days. The plot is slow-paced, more concerned with character development, but the pieces gradually come together as the reader watches in horrid fascination, helpless to prevent what they know will come to fruition.

While reading They Both Die at the End, I had this lyric from Hamilton in my head: “Death doesn’t discriminate / Between the sinners / And the saints / It takes and it takes and it takes.” It’s an sorrowful statement, but it’s also remarkably true, and I think it’s also a statement that is at the heart of this novel: death takes and it’s unfair at times, but at the end of the day we can’t escape it, so must try to live instead.

The title of this book dragged me straight in, and even though the title is a spoiler you don't begrudge the author one bit. A great read about grasping life while you have it, and allowing yourself to push your boundaries to feel and experience all those things on offer that are sometimes just a bit too hard to be bothered.

Knowing the day you are going to die? I guess there is benefit in being given just enough notice, but not too much - certainly a great dinner party conversation starter.

Today is Mateo's last living day. Today is his End Day, as informed to him by a distracted and uncaring woman working at Death-Cast making call after call to each devastated person as fast as she can. He doesn't know when exactly he'll die in the twenty-four hours or how but he does know that it is certain that he won't live any longer than that. Rufus also gets a call in the hour after Mateo actually only giving him twenty-three hours of his life left and he's starting that with beating his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend into the ground. He lost his whole family to Death-Cast in one day so now he plans to make the most at a funeral party with his two best friends and family at the foster home but plans don't always go through exactly.

This is the second book I've read from Adam Silvera but definitely not the last. History is All You Left Me was the first I read of his just two weeks about and it wasn't a great read for me. I still really liked the idea of it but I didn't like the characters and the story for the majority of the book. Ultimately, the author still had a way of writing a really compelling book that you can't help but be glued to, however in the case of They Both Die At The End I might have well been actually glued to it because I literally read it from start to finish because I didn't want to put it down. I know the focus isn't on Death-Cast but it's just such an interesting concept and I really was desperate the whole time to know how the hell they were able to predict everyone's death on the day of their death but the focus is on the people and that focus was really good with so many wonderful moments and surprises along the way.

Now about the two leading roles of this production, Mateo and Rufus. These two meet on the 5th of September with absolutely no previous connection and only one fundamental thing in common - the date of their deaths. However, that is what ends up bringing them close together and creating something beautiful and heartbreaking. Mateo and Rufus weren't my favourites with their mannerisms and all the stalling on their final day but I can't be too annoyed at how they acted at times because that's how any of us could be and that author once again writes perfectly realistic characters with so many flaws and issues. I loved that even though they were so different in background, surrounding and personality they still managed to be perfect companions to each other and I warmed to them more as the story progressed. 

So to summarise, this book might very possibly make you weep if you get attached and you'll be kept up late wanting to know how it ends. I loved the plot and flow of this story and I was pleasantly surprised as well with the great secondary characters. There's a great deal of connection in the book that happens in ways you didn't imagine until it happens and I was really happy with it. Of course, the ending still ruined me just like everyone else because we were prepared for heartache and shock but then again we really weren't because we all expected it to go another way deep down.

This book has an interesting premise - a world where everyone is advised, on the day of, which day will be their last. I think it draws you in and lets the author play with that eternal questions of "what would you do if you knew it was your last day?"

The story was quite engaging, with solid world-building, and well-developed characters. As long as you are happy not to question the premise of knowing which day will be your last, and the self-fulfilling prophecy type nature of it all... then it is a good piece of Young Adult fiction.

They Both Die At The End – Adam Silvera | SPOILER FREE ARC REVIEW
3.75

This was my first Adam Silvera novel so to say I went in with high hopes is an understatement. I’d heard nothing but good things about his previous novels and so I was elated when I got approved for an e-arc of his latest novel, and this was probably the novel I was most excited to read so it was a very happy day for me.

That being said, if you looked at my rating then you know that it hasn’t received the rating I assumed I would give, though a 3 star rating, in my book still constitutes a good book. A 3 star for me, means the book was still good but it was pretty average, for example, I rate the Mistborn novels 5 stars because I fall in love with the world more and more the more I read them. Whereas, I rate the Lux novels 3 stars so far, because while I get through them quickly and quite enjoy them, I find them quite average and don’t think they’re anything special.
I know I’m going on about this a lot but I do want to emphasise that I gave this a 3.75 overall, because while some parts were slow, I did really enjoy the novel overall and will definitely be picking up Silvera’s other novels later on.
Anywayyyyy… let’s get into the review!

Thoughts:
Slow for the most part but I understand why – the book is set over a period of 24 hours so it kind of makes sense – you can’t race through lots of scenes and have a lot of action of high pressure scenes when you’ve only got 24 hours to work with and have to keep the characters alive until the last chapter or two.
The last 20% of the book was phenomenal – it really captured the essence of the characters and showed how the characters had developed throughout the day, it pointed out their flaws and showed them in the very high point in their life. It made me love Adam Silvera and hate him at the same time, for making me fall in love with these characters, only for me to actually remember every few pages that the characters were going to die.
This was such an awesome concept for a book and I’m so glad that Silvera wrote it because he did it flawlessly. This book made me think, it made smile and it made me cry. I will definitely be shoving it under all my friends’ noses when it hits the stores.

I definitely recommend this book if you want something short that will hit you like a tonne of bricks, or as Miley Cyrus would say:
[WRECKING BALL GIF]

If you’re totally on board for all that, then this is the book for you.
It’s been a while since a book has really pulled at my heart strings. I didn’t cry because it seriously takes a hell of a lot to get the waterworks going but damn, I was exhausted by the end of this one. The first two thirds of this was pretty slow but by the last 20% is was reeling, I experienced probably every feeling on the emotions scale. I was going through the works, there was anger, happiness, sadness, everything under the sun. But, I definitely wouldn’t change anything about this book, it was a great read and it really got me thinking about how our actions can completely change our life.

Another thing I really loved about this book is how it doesn’t shy away from the fact that the characters all have family and family plays a big role in the actions we take. One of the main characters, Mateo his best friend is a teen mum and he never shames her or talks down to her, he respects her and babysits whenever she needs a break. He loves their little family and completely respects Lidia (the mum) as a normal person. Also, it talks about how like with Lidia and Mateo (who aren’t actually together, they’re just awesome friends), family isn’t always blood. The other main, Rufus, has a completely different style of family, The Plutos and they’re completely amazing and I love them.

It’s actually just occurred to me that I haven’t actually talked a lot about the world yet, and it’s one of the best aspects of the novel, something to really pay attention to and think about when you pick this one up.
I am going to talk a bit more about some stuff that actually happened in the book, but I won’t go into depth, so this bit is still spoiler free, don’t worry!

• At one point in the novel a character actually says, “teen deckers these days”, which I found really interesting because people obviously still feel really bad when they find out someone is about to die but this has also been completely normalised. I mean, you have people complaining about kids being a bit dramatic or wanting peace and quiet when the kids are literally about to die in less than 24 hours, how harsh is that?
• There’s also a Make A Wish sort of place called Make a moment in this book, and it was really interesting to see wow bored all the employees are, at one point Mateo and Rufus are walking past someone in the foundation and the employee in charge of that station was completely absorbed in their phone.
• The last thing about the world of TBDATE that I want to touch on, that I guess directly relates to what I was talking about before, is that all of this is totally normalised in their society. Someone calls you up at midnight, with a completely emotionless voice and tells you that you have 2 hours or less to live. The people calling you are just trying t get their shift over and done with so they rush through it and often call way after midnight, and so by default you have even less time.
I guess what I found most interesting about the world is that unless you’re actually a Decker, death really isn’t a big deal. Unless you got the call you know you’re going to be fine and so people don’t really worry about it at all, they can do what they like because nothing really effects them. The world is really complex and even if you don’t care for the story I think the world really makes up for any dislikes.

Will I Continue?
This is a standalone so I can’t also THEY’RE DEAD AND I AM HAVING FEELINGS
But, yes, I will definitely be picking up more of Adam Silvera’s novels.