📖 Novel of the Week: They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

Death-Cast is calling Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio because they're dying today...

Death-Cast is a mobile company with only one, ungrateful task: to inform people about their last day. Whenever you receive the call, you know your life is going to end within the next 24 hours.

Mateo Torrez is a kind hearted, solitary 18 years old boy, whose dad is currently in a coma and his best friend, Lidia, is a single mom.

Rufus Emeterio is also a teenager who has lost his parents and sister a few months earlier, after they received the direful call, and is still angry with the world. Thankfully, he got himself some great friends in the foster home he has been staying, they also come up with the nickname 'Plutos'.

These two boys don't know each other and would never have met if it wasn't for Death-Cast and the Last Friend App. 

However, here they are, wondering around New York city from the early hours, wanting to enjoy their last day...to live their last day, cheering each other up.
They don't do anything crazy: Mateo wants to visit his dad in the hospital and his best friend for one last goodbye and while Rufus helps him to get out of his comfort zone and leave his insicurities behind, Mateo as well helps him to free his suppress emotions regarding his family.

👍👎My Thoughts

The title is no clickbait so don't tell it's a spoiler when I say 'yes, they both die at the end'.
The amazingly appealing fact about this book is the writer's ability to make the protagonists forget (along with the reader) the fact that that they're about to die...at some point it just feels like you're reading a story about two guys becoming friends and spending time together, while sharing some memories, opinions and dreams.

Beside Mateo's and Rufus' , the story comes from multiple PoVs: we have Mateo's BFF, Lidia, Rufus ex girlfriend Aimee and his foster home friends, Malcom and Tagoe, but also unrelated people like reporter Delilah Grey, how thinks the call has been set up as a sick revenge joke by his ex fiancée, or action movie actor Howie Maldonado. The common thread is how they react to the call or how they support their loved ones whom received the call.

This novel was beautifully written, with funny, relatable characters and emotions that every one of us experienced at least once: hope, fear and everything in between, showing different approaches to each one of these. The deep relationship Mateo and Rufus start is heart whelming and I knew by the end of the first section that this book was going in my list of favourite.

One final suggestion (beside the obvious READ.THIS.BOOK!) is to combine it with the audiobook because the readers (Michael Crouch, Robbie Daymond and Bahni Turpin) are so expressive and involved they give the book something more!

Related Books & Movies

Final Notice by Van Fleisher

Denton Little's Death Date by Lace Rubin

In Time (2011)

The Brand New Testament (2015)

My vote: 10/10

Ph: goodreads.com