They Both Die at the End

Hello! Welcome to my new part of my blog: reviews! I'm super excited to start reviewing books on here, as I use this as a tracker for my reading progression throughout the year (and on).

Rating: ★★★★

Review: These last few days I read They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. This book was a little different from my usual reads, as the ending comes even before you get to the first page.

I was suspended in a belief of hope about how the ending may have been predetermined but would somehow change in the end. This was obviously

moot, but I still had a hope, a hope that I hold for any of the characters in books I read. You always want to hope for the good ending, but I'm not so sure this was a bad ending.

We always want to believe that death is the ultimate bad ending, that our main characters lose everything they worked so hard to obtain. However, with our main characters here, I really felt like they made a difference in their lives, and others. They fell in love, and while that wasn't really the point of being last friends, they still lived just a little bit more by finding each other. It was easy to see they were meant to be.

While death was the inevitable end, we are left to wonder whether they will be the exceptions, even though their lives meant more because they lived that last day to the fullest with the knowledge of what is on the cover of their book.

I loved Mateo's character, and how we saw that even though in some ways he had been a hermit, we also saw that he was caring about everyone, even those who had wronged him. He was the sort of selfless we see from young people that die unexpectedly, the reason we ask "why?" whenever it comes to those deaths.

Death is something we all have a hard time with, even if just a little bit. Even acceptance comes at a cost, so for a book to so plainly display death on the cover is commendable. Death becomes a common theme here, and somehow that makes it mean so much more.

Now for my spoilers, if you have not read the book and intend to do so, do not go past this point, I hope you enjoyed my review!

Ya'll, I hated Rufus to begin with. He took on this gangster persona in my mind. I thought, this guy is just a thug who likes to beat people up. Then I saw that this was not his norm, that he isn't a terrible person who is going to ruin sweet Mateo. Thank goodness. This could have been a whole other story. He knew that he should not have done it in the first place, and he really felt bad throughout the book.

I felt that he had really loved Aimee, and that was the only reason he even had thought about laying into the guy. Still though, he didn't seem like someone who would actually have done that. I guess we needed a reason to fear for his life, and this was the reason the author started with a scene like this from Rufus POV. I loved that he set out for his day with a sense of knowing, and he really accepted his fate from the beginning. Which is easy to understand with his backstory.

Mateo really had it hard with his dad, and I was hoping for him to wake up too, even though this story aims to be realistic as possible, aside from an all-knowing death company. I hope that his dad somehow heard him, but even so, he knew that he loved him. He lived a truly fantastic last day, and really put forward the effort to live the life he lost in a few hours.

In the end, he accepted his fate too, even with the fear of it weighing down on him. I hoped that he went fast, that the explosion knocked him out immediately, instead of the alternative of burning to death. He deserved a quick death.

While we don't actually know for sure how Rufus dies, I hoped this for him as well. He cared about Mateo more than most people could have after less than twenty-four hours, and yet it made sense how two people who had done so much in a day could feel so much for each other. They had laid their lives before the other, and therefore they had a strong relationship from the beginning.

I felt that this story was a strong four star read. I recently heard that there is going to be a prequel coming out in the near future, which I will definitely be reading.

This world is very interesting, that's for sure, and the concept is very original. I am looking forward to what comes next, or before should I say.