They Both Die at the End: A Tour De Force of Young Adult Fiction (They Both Die at the End Series, 1) Paperback – December 18, 2018

I feel like I should have expected this. The title, the book description, the fact that the last two Adam Silvera books have made me sad, this is no different. This story is so raw, and it makes no secret what's coming at the end, but the journey is still a heartfelt one about two teenage boys who get their Death-Cast calls too soon.This story is about Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio and how to choose to spend their End Day. What this means is that a company known as Death-Cast makes calls between the hours of midnight and 3:00 a.m. to people who will die before the day is out. Everyone handles the calls different, and there are businesses and "perks", if you will, for how people choose to spend their End Day.Mateo Torrez is a gay Puerto-Rican who has been living on his own ever since his dad landed in a coma two weeks previous. He's a bit of an introvert and spends his time looking up how others spend their End Days, fearful and anxious of the day he'll get the call. Rufus Emeterio is a bisexual Cuban-American and gets his call when he's out with his friends, beating up on his ex-girlfriend's current boyfriend. In any other time, Mateo and Rufus might seem like polar opposites, but wanting to be near other people on their End Day brings them together for a day that's full of life like they've never lived before.This story has a very interesting format to it. The chapters told from Mateo and Rufus' POV are all in first-person present, and then there are all the chapters that are told from a wide variety of characters. These are people who only make a passing down the street, or who are close to Mateo and Rufus. But their stories are told in third-person present. It's certainly different. I'm not a fan at all of stories in third-person present, but the author has got me so wrapped up in the story and the characters' lives, that the story chapters from the secondary characters' POV, don't bother me at all and I winded up quite living the format and execution of the storylines.I appreciate how diverse the cast is, and the dark humor that goes with an otherwise potentially grim story. I feel like I should point out that there is, however, that there is a throwaway line about a black character’s name that doesn’t sit well with me.The different aspects involving death are well thought out. Death is the one thing that's inescapable for all humans, but what if we're given the chance to know ahead of time that's it's coming within the next 24 hours? Would we bunker down, hoping to outwit death? Put our affairs in order? Or try to live out the remainder of your life in the fullest way possible?There's something tragic about the book, that the characters are seventeen and eighteen, and still manage to be so...level-headed about it all. Mateo is the sweetest, most pure cinnamon roll and I loved seeing him being able to conquer his fear, a little bit at a time, because he wants to. Rufus is the opposite of Mateo. He's a little loud and rough along the edges compared to Mateo, but there was a time where he had a loving family, and the day they got their Death-Cast call unsettled something in him. He has the Plutos, a name for the kids who live alongside him at a foster home, but when things force him out to find a friend to hang out with, he compliments Mateo in every way.The emotions of all the characters in this story is raw, and definitely not a book you can read without a box of tissues nearby. Although Death-Cast isn't real, the emotions are. I love Mateo and I love Rufus. Their fears, their excitement, it all feels so, so real. It's not really a story with a romance, and yet, for the time period the book spans, the relationship that develops between Mateo and Rufus doesn't feel like an insta-love story. It's one where friendship and love can manifest when you know you may never have it again.They Both Die at the End is a gripping story about life. Mateo and Rufus are the loveliest characters, and Adam Silvera has yet again managed to make me sob through a book and thanking him for it after.***Thank you to HarperCollins for providing me with an e-ARC of this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review***

“Maybe it’s better to have gotten it right and been happy for one day instead of living a lifetime of wrongs.”If a book keeps me up past my bedtime, gets me teary, and even after I finish it I still can’t sleep because I need several hours to process how I feel about what I just read, that’s an automatic “highly recommended.” Thanks, Adam. (I think.)They Both Die at the End is a young adult science fiction novel is set in a world just like ours, with one huge difference. In this world, there exists a service called Death-Cast. Every midnight, Death-Cast phones every person who is going to die on the coming day, to give them a heads-up. To give them one last chance to live to the fullest. To say goodbye. To have a fling. To do whatever they need to do on their Last Day.Mateo Torrez is eighteen. He is bright and talented and kind. He is also agoraphobic and hardly ever leaves his apartment in New York City. He’s about to begin college (an online university, of course). On September 5, 2017 (the release date of the book!) Mateo gets the call. It’s a shock. How could a healthy young man who is too timid even to leave home possibly die so young?Rufus Emeterio is seventeen and also a New Yorker. He gets the call in the middle of beating up his ex’s new boyfriend. Rufus is angry and hard edged. But cut him some slack. He lost his parents and his sister in a car accident just four months ago. Now he lives in a foster home and wonders what kind of future awaits him. None at all, it seems.Mateo and Rufus don’t know each other. Neither of these young men has anyone to spend his Last Day with. Fortunately, there’s an app for that. It’s called Last Friend, and before dawn breaks, Rufus and Mateo are Last Friends. They spend a magical day in New York together, doing their damnedest to live to the utmost. They make their goodbyes. They try new things. They party. They fall in love. Rufus teaches Mateo to be brave. Mateo helps Rufus rediscover his gentle spirit.Spoiler: They both die at the end.They Both Die at the End is a tour de force. A novel in which Death is so near it is practically one of the characters will instantly trigger deep feelings, but this is a two-edged sword. Once you’ve got your readers by the feels, you’d better use the opportunity to show us something worth the pain of the journey, or else your book will feel like cheap manipulation. I am happy to say that Adam Silvera not only passed the test, he aced the extra-credit section.Silvera’s “Death-Cast” is more than just a gimmick to get the plot moving. He devotes some of his novel to examining the impact Death-Cast has on society, on hospitals and emergency services, on celebrity culture, on the internet. Even “Deckers,” as they are called—I couldn’t suss out why—have to put up with creepy people on the internet. Silvera also devotes some chapters to introducing a cast of minor characters. Some are Deckers wrestling with their own fates, some are not, some are already known to Mateo or Rufus, others are not, but all of them cross paths with our two young protagonists on their fateful day.For this story belongs to Mateo and Rufus. It isn’t easy spending your Last Day with another Decker. You can’t help wondering whether you have inadvertently sealed your own doom. Maybe the piano destined to land on his head is going to get you too, since you chose to tag along. Hilariously, tragically, the two young men avoid taking elevators. “Two Deckers riding an elevator on their Last Day is either a death wish or the start to a bad joke,” says Rufus.Over the course of their remarkable day and this amazing book, Mateo and Rufus overcome their initial discomfort, get to know one another, say their goodbyes, have adventures, and narrowly escape several incidents that might have been The End for one or both of them right there. They also open up to one another and heal each other’s hurts until at last their budding friendship blossoms into an honest-to-God love. And Silvera strikes not a single false note along the way.But as the day passes—noon, 5:00 PM, 7:00 PM—the time allotted to them grows short. The tension mounts as they know, and we know, that it must happen before midnight, yet they and we hope beyond any hope that somehow, some way, they will escape their shared fate. One of the most touching moments in a book chock full of touching moments is when the two young men each try to make the other promise not to die first, because neither wants to be the one left behind, even for a moment. It is a promise neither has the power to make of course, and logically they can’t both make it, but the heart has a logic of its own. At last, death comes for them, deaths that were perfectly predictable, in hindsight.We would do well, every one of us, to follow the example of Mateo and Rufus. It is not given to most of us to know the day of our own deaths. But we all know that Death will come. We cannot escape it any more than Rufus or Mateo could. Most of us will never live a day as full as theirs, but we can at least strive to live as many of the days that remain to us as fully as we are able.Because we all die at the end.