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A review by k_shanahan
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera
4.0
This absolutely destroyed me. I'm now on my way to go and read something so stupidly happy that I can forget everything that just took place. I sobbed my way through at least 60% of this book, which I think is just testament to what a good job Adam Silvera did with his writing and character building. The characters were amazing and well-fleshed out. Even the side-characters had details that made them feel real, with real personalities and real problems. The ending was amazing and that's all I'm going to say about it. The romance I didn't expect until maybe two-thirds of the way through the book and then it didn't feel like it was being added to the plot for the sake of something extra to increase the sadness of the story, or as a way to add more variety to the characters, with it being an LGBTQ+ relationship. It felt genuine and made me feel absolutely grief-stricken that these two characters didn't have more time to spend with each other, since the ending to the story was never in question due to the title.
Minor annoyances include Peck's character, since it felt like he jumped from sourly ringing the police on the guy to jumped him to actually attempting to commit murder. However since we didn't know much about him or his gang it could still be legitimate step. It just felt like it went from 0 to 100 rather quickly.
The other thing was the language used by both boys nearer the end of the book- the last 20 pages or so. It got rather metaphorical and floaty and reminiscent of John Green's works, where characters speak like they're far older than their teenage years (no disrespect to John Green's novels). They didn't speak like this for the majority of the book, throwing in statements about mortality and what it means throughout. Then again, at this stage they both had about 4 hours to live. At that stage I would become introspective as well. I'm not sure. I need more time to think about it. These were both just very minor annoyances.
The chapters in-between Mateo and Rufus' story were welcome breaks and also world-building as they gave an inside perspective to how other character's received the death-cast notification, or how their colleagues, the police and various others helped to work around it. All stories overlap very cleverly, also.
I would recommend this book to anyone with the warning that you need to be in a certain mood for it, which is why it took me quite a while to finish it. It is sad and funny at the same time. In the end I genuinely felt content that the two protagonists found each other and were happy in their final moments.
Minor annoyances include Peck's character, since it felt like he jumped from sourly ringing the police on the guy to jumped him to actually attempting to commit murder. However since we didn't know much about him or his gang it could still be legitimate step. It just felt like it went from 0 to 100 rather quickly.
The other thing was the language used by both boys nearer the end of the book- the last 20 pages or so. It got rather metaphorical and floaty and reminiscent of John Green's works, where characters speak like they're far older than their teenage years (no disrespect to John Green's novels). They didn't speak like this for the majority of the book, throwing in statements about mortality and what it means throughout. Then again, at this stage they both had about 4 hours to live. At that stage I would become introspective as well. I'm not sure. I need more time to think about it. These were both just very minor annoyances.
The chapters in-between Mateo and Rufus' story were welcome breaks and also world-building as they gave an inside perspective to how other character's received the death-cast notification, or how their colleagues, the police and various others helped to work around it. All stories overlap very cleverly, also.
I would recommend this book to anyone with the warning that you need to be in a certain mood for it, which is why it took me quite a while to finish it. It is sad and funny at the same time. In the end I genuinely felt content that the two protagonists found each other and were happy in their final moments.