They Both Die at the End – Adam Silvera
100-Word (or Less) Synopsis: As a public service, Death-Cast calls people within 24-hours of their last day alive, providing them an opportunity to tie-up loose ends and have a final adventure. But for Mateo and Rufus, both teenagers, the calls bring with it complicated feelings of a life ending before it really begins.
Expectation: A young adult romance weep fest.
Reality: A good balance of heavy subject matter with lighter moments, buoyed by two charming main characters and an understated love story.
Recommended For: Young adult fans and those looking for a PG M/M romance.
Why I Read It: When I finally got comfortable reading gay literature in 2018 and wanted to explore the best-of-the-best, this book was amongst the highest rated on Goodreads.
My Take:
Would you want to be notified 24-hours ahead of your impending death? That’s a big no for me, as the stress of waiting for a potential call each day would effectively ruin any sort of happy existence.
The characters in “They Both Die at the End” don’t have a choice. On your final day, an emotionally-taxed Death-Cast operator will call around midnight giving the warning that today you’ll meet your maker – just not the details on how or exactly when it will happen.
For Mateo, the barely 18-year-old loner with a dead mother and dad in a coma, he decides that now is the time to live after a life of playing it safe. Unwilling to die in front of his only friend, he downloads an app that connects “Deckers” with a Last Friend™.
He soon connects with Rufus, a handsome 17-year-old orphan who received his Death-Cast notification while beating his ex-girlfriend’s current boyfriend, which sets off a chain of events that isolates him from his foster family.
Morbid meet-cute aside, the two make a charming pair as each pushes the other towards accepting their fate and going out with a little adventure…and romance. This is gay young adult fiction after all, so you know they are going to fall in love.
I’m not a fan of YA, but “Both” was rather enjoyable! Silvera may be an author I make an exception for since this and “What If It’s Us,” co-written with Becky Albertalli, are about the only YA romances I’ve not rolled my eyes through.
It does contain a few of the usual tropes — pop culture references that are dated within a few years; zany plot twists to keep the characters apart only to find their way back together, etc. — but Silvera strikes the perfect balance of schmaltz with emotional depth, which in this case has the young men openly discussing grief, regret and missed opportunities.
As one character says: “My Last Message would be to find your people. And to treat each day like a lifetime.” It’s a powerful reminder for all readers.
But, this is not a perfect novel by any means. While I appreciate Silvera’s high-tech and quasi-science fiction take on a relatively overdone premise, he tried to do a bit too much world building by introducing subplots with an assortment of characters sort of connected to the Mateo/Rufus plot but not always explained with detail.
He also knows how to usher the story along, but the constant need for Mateo and Rufus to experience things, like sky diving and visiting a payphone graveyard — and real graveyard — meant the more interesting sections, discussions of fate and mortality, are relatively short-lived.
The most powerful and heartbreaking chapter was when they were on the subway manufacturing their future lives while reminiscing about a shared past they will never experience. It was the moment when they truly realize this is the end, but also find comfort in knowing they found something special.
Even though you know what’s going to happen, I still had tears for Mateo and Rufus, a testament to Silvera and his creativity.
As an audiobook, it’s completely passable but unremarkable. Michael Crouch and Robbie Daymond provide the voices to Mateo and Rufus, while Bahni Turpin gives the subplots life. Collectively they hit all the right notes, but a growing pet peeve of mine is when a narrator talks through a song instead of singing it, especially when it’s well-known (in this case Don McLean’s “American Pie” and Elton John’s “Your Song”), which makes the use of it as a plot device fall flat.
Rating (story): 3.5/5 stars
Rating (narration): 3/5
Formats: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: February 1 – 3, 2021
Multi-tasking: Good to go.
