They Both Die At The End

By Adam Silvera

Published by Harper Collins

ADAM Silvera’s best-selling novel sets you up for the tears it will cause throughout – and particularly at the end – with its title, a bold choice that acts not as a deterrent but as a source of intrigue about the journey it promises.

It’s a story built around death but the reader comes to discover that it’s really about everything else.

It focuses on making the most of your time in life however you can and shows how much people can come to mean to us in however long or short the time we get to spend with them is.

Far from being a book about death it’s really changing your perspective on life and what it means to you personally.

The world of They Both Die At The End is not unlike our own, but with one major difference that drives the plot and themes – the Death Cast.

This is an organisation devoted to knowing when people are going to die and arranging for them to receive a phone call giving them 24 hours’ notice.

There’s so much about this concept that’s fascinating, including how something so daunting and dreadful as this phone call is built into the world as a part of life that everyone understands they will one day need to deal with, just as they have to deal with death itself.

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When the call arrives everyone reacts differently, whether they take the warning as a sign to take risks and live life to the fullest, or to stay away from anything they perceive to be dangerous in an attempt to avoid their fate.

It makes the reader wonder how they would cope and what they would do with a real deadline of 24 hours.

Though they are most known for the phone calls, Death Cast also provides a number of other services. Most importantly for the purpose of this book is an app by the name of The Last Friend, which allows those receiving their call on the same day to meet.

This is what brings together the book’s two main characters Mateo and Rufus, with most of the narrative switching between their perspectives.

They spend some of their day accepting the loss of relationships with friends or family and all of it developing a simultaneously doomed and hopeful relationship with each other.

The fact that the story takes place over only one day never limits the experience of their relationship. Although there’s a sense of resentment at not having been able to meet before the day they will die, there’s also acceptance and genuine, profound happiness and peace that balances out the sadness.

The two characters go through friendship and love and loss in such a short period of time that it feels less and less like one day and more like a lifetime. It acknowledges darkness with such hope and a sense of humour that there’s something incredibly light about the feeling after finishing it.

There’s romance but it’s not quite a romance novel. It’s filled with excitement but isn’t quite an adventure novel. At its core it’s just a story about life and death and everything in between.