They Both Die at the End

Introduction

They Both Die at the End was written by Adam Silvera and published on September 5th, 2017, by Harper Collins Publishers. My former college roommate had been insisting that I should read this book for months before I finally committed to it. It was slow going at first, but I eventually got to a point where I couldn’t put it down. While this was supposed to be a review for her birthday, and I am instead posting it almost three months late, I hope she enjoys it anyway. I know that I fell in love with this book, and I think young adult fiction readers who like books with layered and challenging themes will love it too. If you are at all interested, I highly recommend going into it completely blind - I know the title seems self explanatory, but I promise it’s worth it. If you still aren’t sure, then take a look at my Spoiler-Free Thoughts section for a safe insight on my opinions. If you have read the book and are looking for the specifics of the plot and themes, the Thoughts section is full of them. This is one of those books that I would really love to have further conversation about with others, so please leave your own thoughts and opinions in the comments on these posts.

To keep up with Adam Silvera and his other work, visit his website http://www.adamsilvera.com and follow him on social media @adamsilvera.

Plot

When Rufus and Mateo get a call from Death Cast informing them that they won’t survive the next twenty-four hours, they spend their last day living what’s left of life to the fullest.

Spoiler-Free Thoughts

Because of the nature of this book, all character development for Rufus and Mateo has to happen within the pages of just this story, which means that it took a while for me to get attached to them. I couldn’t imagine being as invested as I eventually was when I started it, and I didn’t start to feel that way until about halfway through. I can’t help but wonder if the relatively ordinary nature of their lives wasn’t intentional, but I’ll get more into the thematic elements soon.

I was intrigued by the seemingly random perspectives thrown into this book and how they furthered not only the plot but the themes. Some of the Death Cast operators seem cold and uncaring, while others - unsurprisingly - need some serious counseling to deal with telling dozens of people day after day that they have less than twenty-four hours left to live. The perspectives of the friends and family surrounding Rufus and Mateo show the stages of grief as they are felt, as well as how they are dealt with, and they offer a different perspective on the story. Knowing that you will die is one thing, but knowing that your family is going to die is something else entirely. Some of them are there to be the thread stringing together all of the different perspectives to create a better continuity within this world. No matter who is narrating, every single goodbye hurts, so much so that the ending had me sobbing.

I absolutely loved the themes of this book, and they actually kept me interested while I was waiting to become attached to the characters. Their stories didn’t immediately have me hooked because their lives are relatively normal, but I do think that that’s intentional. Death is an inevitability of life that can happen to anybody at any time, not just the extraordinary, but that doesn’t make Rufus and Mateo’s stories any less worthy of being told. I also appreciated the exploration of how different people choose to deal with the knowledge that they have less than twenty-four hours left of life, or rather not deal with it. Chosen family is another one emphasizing the allowance of space only to people who want to be a part of your life. We have such little time to begin with, we can’t waste it on people who don’t want it. There are so many more that I either get into in the Thoughts section or don’t mention at all, but this book is amazing for people who like to contemplate questions of fate, life, death, and the afterlife.

This book was a rollercoaster, and while the beginning was slow, the ending had me sobbing harder than I expected and harder than I have while reading a book in a long time. The characters and empathetic and the themes are complex, making for a very emotional read. For all of those reasons, I’m giving this a 9.5/10, and that half point off is only because of how long I took to really care about these characters.

Thoughts

I felt that Rufus and Mateo had good dialogue and banter with one another, but their dynamic went deeper than that. I felt that they balanced one another out. Rufus is more daring than Mateo, but Mateo tends to round out Rufus’ sharper edges with the small kindnesses he does throughout the book. Not to say that Rufus is unkind, rather he is cynical. Mateo is more optimistic than Rufus, and I appreciated his emphasis on doing something not because it directly benefits you or to rack up good karma, but to do it simply because it’s a good thing to do. In short, Mateo taught Rufus to live for others, and Rufus taught Mateo to live for himself, which are both lessons we can apply to ourselves. I felt very touched by that.

I also enjoyed the romance element of the book, which will not surprise anyone who frequents this blog. What I enjoyed most about it though was that it didn’t truly feel like a romance. Instead, it felt like two strangers becoming great friends on their last day and slowly realizing that they could have had a happy future together had they been granted more time to have one. It is as beautiful as it is devastating.

I know this could go into the Spoiler-Free Thoughts sections because truly, you know going into this book how it ends - it’s in the title - but some may go in with the hope that they will do the impossible and cheat death. Futile though I knew it was, I fell into that trap myself. I mentioned above that it wasn’t until about halfway through the book that I felt really connected to Mateo and Rufus, but with that connection came a sense of dread. The more invested I became, the more scared I was to finish the book, which was completely juxtaposed against the feeling that I shouldn’t stop reading. This was only exacerbated by the boys barely escaping situations that easily could have ended their lives, like when Vin blew up the gym as they walked past it.

That wasn’t how they died though. Morbid as it sounds, they both had deaths fitting to their characters. Mateo had finally made it back to his safe space but decided to leave it - something he only had the courage to do because of Rufus - to do something nice for the two of them. That act ended up killing him when the stove went up in flames, killing him in the most Mateo way possible. With Mateo gone, Rufus no longer had someone pulling him back from the curb or reminding him to look both ways before walking into the street. He was no longer cautious because he was no longer balanced, and when he tipped over the edge, he lost his life. I haven’t been that devastated while reading in a long time.