Book Thoughts: "They Both Die at the End" by Adam Silvera

CW: death, discussions of anxiety

On Friday January 15, 2021 (yes, I keep track of when I read books), I read They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. It's a book that I've had on my TBR list for a very long time, but didn't read until this year when I saw everyone talking about it on TikTok. It's a really, really fantastic book in a lot of ways, and I have a lot of thoughts about it. The day I read it, I actually wrote a rough review, and this post has a lot of those initial thoughts.

I’m going to tell you outright that this is not a review. I love this book, and I really just have a lot to talk about with it. I cover a variety of topics. It’s less of a pitch to get you to read the book and more of a discussion about why I liked it so much.

In this universe, there is a service known as Death Cast that knows when people are going to die and alerts you that you have less than 24 hours left. They Both Die at the End is the story of Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio’s last day alive. The two boys get connected through an app called Last Friend that is meant to connect people on their Last Day, leaving them to figure out how to live a whole lifetime in one day. This is a rough paraphrasing of the back summary of the book, simply because there’s not much else I can say without spoiling the book -- something I’m sure you can assume given the title. I really recommend that, if you read this book, you read it blind. I think this book is brilliant and cannot give it enough praise, but you should wait to read my thoughts until you read it for yourself. However, if you are absolutely not interested, that’s fine too, and you can just read my review/reflections.

So this is your warning: I'm about to talk about They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. Go read the book, then come back here.

Okay, for those of you who ignored my warnings and are just here to read my thoughts, I’ll go through a brief summary. I’m giving you one final chance to turn back and read the book.

As I said earlier, Mateo and Rufus get the call that they have less than 24 hours to live. Mateo is stuck in his apartment; he doesn’t want to leave, but he doesn’t want to stay either. His mom died a while back, and his dad is in a coma in the hospital. He’s alone in his apartment, where he always is. He decides to download the Last Friend app to connect with someone, as he initially doesn’t want to burden his one friend, Lidia, with his impending death. Meanwhile, Rufus is beating up his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend when he gets the call. He decides to head back to his foster home (he lost his family when their car crashed into a river) to have a funeral with his friends. The funeral gets cut short by the arrival of the cops, and Rufus makes a run for it. While he’s wandering around, he sees an advertisement for Last Friend. He downloads it, and the boys get connected.

They go to a variety of places around their city: Lidia’s house, the hospital to see Mateo’s dad, the graveyard that Mateo’s mom is buried in, a place called Make-a-Moment where people on their last day can safely experience a new activity (like skydiving), and a center that gives the illusion of seeing the whole world in a short amount of time. At the last location, Mateo finally tells Lidia that he’s dying, and she joins their group. The boys are growing closer throughout the day. After the attractions with Lidia, the group decides to head to a club for people on their Last Day. There the two boys since a duet and finally confess their feelings for each other.

After a confrontation with the boy that Rufus was beating up at the beginning of the book, they escape to Mateo’s apartment where they hang out, and Rufus describes the bed as a safe place where they know they won’t die. After they take a nap, however, Mateo wakes up and goes to make tea on his broken shove, which explodes and kills him. Rufus manages to pull Mateo’s body out of the apartment, but he’s already dead. He accompanies Mateo to the hospital, where he leaves one final note for Mateo’s dad before heading out. As he’s watching videos and reminiscing on his time with Mateo, Rufus walks into oncoming traffic, which is where the book ends.

Believe it or not, this is the shortest summary I can manage. The book also covers a series of side plots, all of which are interconnected with Mateo and Rufus. I’ll explain those as we go, but Mateo and Rufus are the focus of the story.

One thing I want to applaud specifically is Silvera’s ability to write such an interconnected story. Every detail that he introduces matters. Mateo mentioned his stove being broken at the very beginning of the book in an off-handed comment, and Rufus’ obliviousness is well established in the story. But even beyond our main characters, we see so many details planned out perfectly. The gang that comes after Rufus (driven by his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend) causes a car accident that kills a famous actor who also got his call that morning. Mateo’s overwhelming selflessness is the thing that ends up saving Rufus’ life in the nightclub before they manage to escape. All of these details lined up so perfectly, and it pulled the story together so smoothly.

There are also a lot of questions to be had about Death Cast. How do they know who is going to die and when? Do they know details, or just that the death will happen? What about in situations where it appears that the Death Cast call is the reason people die? There are so many fascinating questions about this universe, but I really love how none of them actually matter. Silvera didn’t set us up with a dystopian world to pick apart and overcome; he set us up with a system that we just have to work within.

“Death-Cast is calling with the warning of a lifetime -- I’m going to die today.”

The thing I love most about this book is how upfront it is with you. The title tells you exactly how the story ends. The first line, which I quoted from above, is Mateo telling us that he’s going to die today. There should be no question about what happens at the end of the book. And yet people online consider it to be a spoiler to discuss the fact that at the end of the book, they both die.

I will admit that I did not go into this story completely blind. I was told that they were actually both going to die at the end. And yet, as I read the story, I found myself doubting that fact. I think this comes from reading a lot of dystopian novels in my formative years as a reader. I was practically raised on books where the main character was the exception to the rules of the world. Tris was divergent, Katniss was the mockingjay, Harry was the boy who lived, Percy was the son of Poseidon. All of these characters were special. Most books focus not on one of the normal people living in society, but on the character who forces the universe within the book to change. It’s not crazy to assume that this book will be any different: maybe they will end up overthrowing Death Cast, or they’ll reveal to the world how Death Cast knows people are going to die. Or maybe they’ll be lucky and their love will prevent them from dying -- love is practically magic in so many other books, why not this one?

But that’s not the story that They Both Die at the End is here to tell. And that’s why it hurts so much. Despite everything about the book warning you to not get attached to these characters, you do it anyway. You celebrate their close calls, and you cheer when Mateo finally admits to himself that he loves Rufus. Just like you’re there with Rufus as he’s sobbing over Mateo’s body, and you’re still with him later when his life is abruptly cut short. They Both Die at the End is the epitome of “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” You know from the beginning that this won’t end well for the characters. There’s no great twist. There’s no shocking revelation. They grow, they love, they live, and they die. That’s it. You get exactly what you’re promised.

“But no matter what choices we make -- solo or together -- our finish line remains the same. It doesn’t matter if we don’t go skydiving to play it safe, even though it means we’ll never get to fly like my favorite superheroes do. It doesn’t matter if we keep our heads low when passing a gang in a bad neighborhood. No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end.”

Another interesting facet is that we are not the only ones who know how the book ends. I’ve read books where the main character dies before, and I’ve reread those books after I already know what’s going to happen. Heck, I’ve seen storylines where the premise is that the main character will die at the end. But the main character never knows this, it’s just information I keep for myself. In this book, however, Rufus and Mateo are both fully aware of their fate, and they aren’t trying to get around it. This is how books work: we’re introduced to characters, we fall in love with them, and we want to see them happy. The boys are in the exact same situation with each other as we are with them, and that’s such a fascinating way to set up a book.

“I doubt the world is in the mood for a miracle, so we know not to expect a happily-ever-after. I only care about the endings we lived through today. Like how I stopped being someone afraid of the world and the people in it.”

As far as the two main characters go, I was really attached to Mateo. Dumb idea given the nature of the book, sure, but it makes sense, right? I’m like Mateo (and by extension, the author -- more on that in a bit) in the sense that I’m an anxious wreck most of the time. Everyone who has ever interacted with me can tell you this: I second guess everything, my self-confidence is lacking, I spend a lot of time indoors by myself, and I have a small number of friends that I love and adore (if you’re reading this: hi). Mateo is similar, except a bit younger than me. Not to mention that I absolutely read him as asexual, although I’m sure that wasn’t the author’s intention. Anyway, I can’t help but wonder what I would have done in Mateo’s place, given all the similarities. Would I also be willing to go and finally experience the world, or would my anxiety hold me back still?

It doesn’t stop Mateo. Despite all his anxieties, Mateo goes out and lives. He has experiences and creates memories; he lets himself be happy, even just for a day. Considering it’s a story about his death, he’s an oddly inspiring character to me. In his last moments, he makes an effort (with Rufus’ help) to not let his fear stop him from enjoying himself. He sings off key in front of a massive crowd, he dances, he falls in love, he enjoys himself and those in his company. He lived in the Death Cast universe, so he was able to be warned about his death. We don’t have that luxury (or curse, I suppose, depending on how you look at it). Out here in the real world, we could die at any minute, so isn’t it worth living every moment like it’s your last? I could be dead in less than 24 hours -- who cares if I’m not perfect in the meantime? I mentioned earlier that Mateo is somewhat of a self-insert character for Silvera, as indicated in the acknowledgements at the end of the book. Silvera says that he definitely thinks he would be more of a Mateo than a Rufus in the Death Cast universe, and that writing Mateo inspired him to try to live more. He tries to challenge his anxious thoughts with the question of whether or not he’ll regret doing something on his deathbed.

“When I’m on my deathbed, I want to be at peace with how I lived.” (Silvera)

Anyway, back to our main characters. If I’m going to project onto Mateo, I absolutely have to love Rufus. Rufus and I had a bit of a rocky start, as we’re introduced to him while he’s in the middle of beating a kid up. He grew on me, though. He’s sweet, and he does have a good heart, but his emotions got the best of him in that moment. Rufus is also the polar opposite of Mateo. When he gets the Death Cast call, he resigns himself to death pretty quickly. Like, “yeah, this might as well happen.” Not to say he’s happy about it, but he can handle it.

Well, he’s okay with it until he meets and falls in love with Mateo. Suddenly, he has everything to lose. And he does, of course, but we aren’t going to talk about that yet.

Mateo and Rufus being polar opposites at the beginnings of their arcs is really important. They are two extremes: Mateo is too careful and Rufus is not nearly careful enough. Mateo’s empathy and compassion is able to pull Rufus more towards the center, whereas Rufus’ eagerness for life forced Mateo to get out and have experiences. They were so good for each other, and they were so lucky that they were able to get the chance to connect.

“People have their time stamps on how long you should know someone before earning the right to say it, but I wouldn’t lie to you no matter how little time we have. People waste time and wait for the right moment and we don’t have that luxury. If we had our entire lives ahead of us I bet you’d get tired of me telling you how much I love you because I’m positive that’s the path we were heading on. But because we’re about to die, I want to say it as many times as I want -- I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.”

They were good for each other, right?

Look, it’s not a positive thought, but I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t watch Rufus pull Mateo’s body out of the burning apartment and think, “Oh my God, they’ve killed each other.” Because if Mateo had never met Rufus, he wouldn’t have gotten up to make tea for the two of them. And if Rufus wasn’t grieving, he wouldn’t have walked into the road. It leads me to think that if Mateo and Rufus had never met each other, they might still be alive. Which brings us to another big question: is it better to really live and love only to lose it all? Is a life devoid of these things really worth living? To be clear, I don’t mean to imply that romantic love is necessary for a fulfilling life. We can take romantic love out of the equation entirely: let’s say the boys had a completely platonic relationship. Or better yet, let’s say there was nobody else at all and the boys did something individually to find that kind of pure happiness provided by their safe island. Is it better to never have that kind of joy and live, or find it knowing that you’ll lose everything?

I don’t have an answer for that. But I can say something a little more comforting: I don’t believe that Mateo and Rufus killed each other. They were going to die anyway. Mateo barely left his house; without Rufus, he probably still would’ve forgotten about the stove and turned it on. Rufus would’ve still been looking down at his phone as he walked into oncoming traffic. Having each other might’ve changed the context in which they died, but it was not the thing that killed them. And if you disagree, I think it’s a rather pessimistic thing to take from this book. We shouldn’t blame our tragedies on the moments that we found happiness in. Sadness and heartbreak is a natural part of life, but it isn’t caused by positivity. Believing that will only drive us away from seeking joy, which doesn’t do any good.

“We’re not dying because of love. We’re going to die today, no matter what. You didn’t just keep me alive, you made me live.”

The day I finished the book, I cried for hours. And yes, the story is heartbreaking (especially for a super emotional person like me), but it was more than that. As someone who does struggle a lot with anxiety, this book make me seriously reconsider how I was living my life. Like Silvera described in his author’s note at the end, I want to be content with how I lived my life when I’m on my deathbed. I don’t want to think about all the things I could’ve done if I hadn’t talked myself out of it. But one 300ish page YA novel isn’t going to completely cure someone of anxiety, so I have two main takeaways that I have decided to consider more after reading it.

1. You should live as if you know that you will die in the next 24 hours.

We obviously do not live in the Death Cast universe, so we are not able to get a heads up when our final moments are coming. Therefore, we should act as if that could happen at any moment. However, we need to approach this as a combination of both Rufus and Mateo. Be like Rufus and push yourself to get out there and live. Try to not think twice about every little thing, and allow yourself to have fun without worrying so much about being perfect. But also be like Mateo and be both cautious and empathetic. Don’t rush through life so fast that you forget to stop and think. Consider things that will be a real danger to you -- don’t ride in dangerous vehicles, stay away from harmful situations, and for God’s sake do not walk into oncoming traffic while looking down at your phone. But also, remember to stop and take care of those around you. Live, yes, but don’t rush through life either. It’s about letting yourself find joy where you can. Tell people how you feel about them, be randomly nice to strangers, and live as truthfully as you can.

2. Be grateful for the time you do have.

When I read this book, it was deep into the pandemic. The insurrection happened just over a week ago, I was back at college for another semester completely alone. I was also having constant anxiety about my asexuality, as I was actively trying to hide it from people. I’m not going to pretend it was a really happy time in my life, because it wasn’t. My anxiety was super high, as it had been for months because of the pandemic. Something I’ve tried to remind myself about is that I have survived so far. Despite all the anxiety, despite all the horrible events -- I’m alive. And sure, that doesn’t make the bad feelings go away. But when I have managed to feel better, I’m able to have a better appreciation for the good things in my life. I have a family that loves and supports me, I have great friends, I have hobbies that I love. And most importantly, I have more time. Anything could happen from this point forward. Try new things, meet new people, and appreciate the fact that you have the time to do it.

So, if you made it all the way to this point and want my official review of They Both Die at the End, here it is. This book is one of my favorite books ever, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the impact it had on me when I first read it. It explores death, loss, grief, and love in fascinating and unique ways, and it leaves you with lots of new ideas for your own life. Adam Silvera did us a great service by taking us along Mateo and Rufus’ story, and it’s a journey I’ll never forget. And I think his words are the best way to conclude here today:

“So yeah, maybe the title ruined the reading experience for some people. But I actually have a bigger spoiler for everyone: We all die at the end. Every single one of us. But once again, how we die, or the fact that we die isn’t the point at all. I can’t spoil the answer for this next question, but I hope it’s one we keep on our minds daily: How did we live?”

From yours truly,

Kendall