They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera caught my attention when I was scrolling through a classmate’s Goodreads feed and saw that they’d given this book a 5-star rating. I pulled it up and read the synopsis. Oh…wow. It sounded extremely interesting and I instantly went and borrowed the book from the school library.
SYNOPSIS
Mateo Torres and Rufus Emeterio live in a world where the Death-Cast calls you the day you die, telling you to live life to the fullest. You don’t know how you’re going to go or exactly how long you have, but you know you need to make whatever you have last. The two boys meet each other through the Last Friend app, and soon become good friends, perhaps even getting on the path to falling in love.
WHAT I LIKED
- Really cool premise
- Very enjoyable to read
- Good representation of Latinos and POCs in general. It’s funny how not a single word of Spanish is spoken, yet Ready Player One, a book with non-Latino characters, random Spanish-dropping is very common
- Nobody is a throw-away character. Everybody’s story connects and that was pretty beautiful
- Really nice reflective thinking. I’m not sure how to describe it but they both think a lot of nice things
- Rufus constantly saying “yo” and “mad (adjective)” cracked me up
- I loved all the characters
- Lovely portrayal of friendships and love
- Extremely important lesson at the end — live life to the fullest
- Clever foreshadowing with the stove. I never would have thought…
- I liked the ominous feel to the ending
WHAT I DISLIKED
- I can’t think of anything, actually
Overall, I LOVED this book. I stayed up all night reading it, and it probably made me cry way too hard.