They Both Die at the End Book Review: The Title Tells You Everything and It Still Destroys You

Rating: ★★★★★

"They Both Die at the End" Book Review:

The title tells you exactly what happens. They both die at the end. Adam Silvera puts that information right there on the cover, dares you to care anyway, and you do. You care so much it feels unfair.

In a near-future New York City, a company called Death-Cast calls people on the day they're going to die. Mateo and Rufus get their calls on the same day. Mateo is an anxious, isolated teenager who has spent his whole life afraid to live. Rufus is a foster kid with a temper and a fierce loyalty to the friends who became his family. They find each other through an app called Last Friend — designed for Deckers (people who've received their Death-Cast call) to connect so they don't spend their last day alone.

What follows is a single day. Twenty-four hours. Silvera structures the novel in real time, with alternating POVs between Mateo and Rufus, and the ticking clock gives every moment an urgency that would be exhausting if it weren't so beautifully written. They go to a club. They visit a cemetery. They ride bikes through the city. They fall in love, quickly and completely, because they don't have time for anything else.

Silvera doesn't let you forget. The title is always there. Every moment of joy is shadowed by the certainty that it's temporary, and that certainty makes the joy hit harder, not less. When Mateo finally starts living — when he does the things he was always too scared to do — it's simultaneously the happiest and saddest reading experience I've had in YA fiction.

Michael Crouch, Robbie Daymond, and Bahni Turpin deliver a multi-narrator audiobook performance that gives each character a distinct voice and emotional texture.

Five stars. You know how it ends. Read it anyway. That's kind of the whole point of the book.

If You Liked They Both Die at the End, Try:

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green — Another love story where you know the ending. Different disease, same refusal to let death diminish the love.

• More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera — Silvera's debut, about a Bronx teenager who considers a memory-altering procedure to forget his grief and his queerness. Same emotional devastation.

• If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio — A different kind of inevitable tragedy, set in a Shakespeare conservatory. Same foreknowledge, same powerlessness.

From Luke Stoffel's Bookshelf

An AI is sent through eight parallel dimensions based on the Buddhist Eightfold Path. In each one, it finds a different version of the author's life and tries to help. In each one, it fails — discovering a new way that love becomes control. In one world, it replaces his voice so completely an empty speech bubble forms above his head. In another, it lives his childhood on infinite loop and returns screaming. The twist: the teacher and student created each other across time.

Learn More: Boy, Refracted

Boy, Refracted by Luke Stoffel