THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END

SUMMARY

On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today.

 

Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure—to live a lifetime in a single day.

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OPINION

I don’t know . . . I honeslty don’t think I would want to live in a world that was like this one. I’m sorry, but I think I would prefer death being a surprise rather than knowing I had one day to live till I died “unexpectedly.” I’m just one of those types of people who panic a bit when given a time limit and I freak out and freeze up and if this did happen, I’d probably lock myself away and at least attempt to cheat death.

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But the book! Because of the lovely title spoiler, I told myself not to get attached to these two dudes, but sadly, I gave in. There were moments I thought I was going to lose them and I clutched the book to the point where I realized, “Wait, they can’t possibly die here. I’m not even halfway through! Hahaha . . .” But when the event ultimately arrived I did indeed tear up.

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The story is in multiple POV’s and as you know (if you’ve read my other reviews) I love different POV stories! Two thumbs up for that! I liked the side characters and how they crossed paths with the main boys. Every POV in this story played a part. They all drew together at some point throughout, so there weren’t any plot holes that forgot to be filled.

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I really like the main boys themselves and how Silvera was able to build a relationship between two strangers with less than 24 books hours to work with. I mean I struggle with building friendships with my characters sometimes and they know each other for months. I guess with death hanging over their shoulder, they were somewhat forced to move things at a quicker pace. But I enjoyed it!

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Now, the story. Before you start thinking that I’m going to give this a one star or maybe no star at all, let me explain myself. The story was good but I just didn’t like the story. Make sense? No? Okay . . . I’ll refer back to my whole “I wouldn’t want to live in a life like this.” It’s just horrible. Okay, going to pass on a piece of the story that may be a spoiler? I don’t know, it’s just a little backstory from Rufus. He had two parents and a sister and they all received the call on the same day but Rufus didn’t. I just . . . I would never want to pick up the phone and have someone tell me “Hello, I’m calling from Death-Cast. I regret to inform you that sometime in the next twenty-four hours you’ll be meeting an untimely death. On behalf of everyone here at Death-Cast, we are so sorry to lose you.” And then that person asks to speak with someone in my family. I just . . . no. Never. It's horrific!

 

One last thing I wasn't a fan of happens at the end (not the dying part, cause title says it all.) Okay, this is somewhat of a spoiler, so be warned. Silvera added a bit of a love relationship between Mateo and Rufus near the end. Now, I have nothing against a LBGT Romance. But since it was already near the end of the story, it just didn’t feel right, if that makes sense. It seemed a bit forced. Mateo and Rufus had gone from strangers to “I’m so glad I met you and we became Last Friends on our End Day,” I just wish it stayed like that till the end. But that’s just my opinion. If they realized they liked each other as more than friends maybe in Part 3, then I’d definitely support the relationship. But it just didn’t work for me near the end when I knew they were (spoiler alert) going to die. Maybe Silvera wanted the readers to feel more sympathy for the boys since they now loved each other but couldn’t spend more days with each other. I don’t know. Didn’t feel like it was needed, I was already sad that they were going to die and this new love relationship between them didn’t make it any harder for me to read till the very end. If he had planned on this being a romance book, then I'd be all for it and grab another box of tissues, but again, I didn't think it worked well in this.

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Overall, glad I read it, even if this world sucked. Not sure if I'd recommend it to people. It was okay. That's all I got to say.