{"id":18293,"date":"2018-02-01T14:37:49","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T19:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/?p=18293"},"modified":"2018-02-01T14:37:49","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T19:37:49","slug":"they-both-die-at-the-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/2018\/02\/the-bookworm-sez\/they-both-die-at-the-end\/","title":{"rendered":"They Both Die At The End"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FebBookPic\"<\/a>The End. The vast majority of us don\u2019t know when it will come and, though it\u2019s life\u2019s last big surprise, we don\u2019t like to think about it. Yes, you will die, but what if you knew it was coming \u2013 today? Would you reach for your family or, as in the new novel \u201cThey Both Die at the End\u201d by Adam Silvera, would you make a new one? The phone call came shortly after midnight. Mateo wasn\u2019t expecting it \u2013 but then, who expects a call from the Death-Cast, anyhow? He thought about not answering the phone, but there was no getting out of it: his time was up. He was going to die, and the worst part was that he was going to die without talking to his dad first. Mateo\u2019s father was in a coma and if he ever woke up, someone else would have to tell him that Mateo was gone. And that was that: he\u2019d spent all his time with his dad and his gamer stuff and he didn\u2019t exactly have any true friends he could count on. No, Mateo Torrez was going to die, just eighteen years old, alone, in a tiny apartment. But first, he downloaded the Last Friend app. The phone call came just after 1 a.m. Rufus was beating the heck out of his ex-girlfriend\u2019s new boyfriend then, and everybody figured Death-Cast was calling Peck. No, it was Rufus\u2019 phone that was ringing. Rufus was going to die. He\u2019d been through this before: four months prior, his parents and his sister had all gotten the call on the same night. He\u2019d been in an orphanage since then because he was only seventeen, almost an adult, a milestone he\u2019d never make. He couldn\u2019t let his friends watch him die and so, just after Peck called the cops to report the assault, Rufus bolted. Spend his final hours in jail? No way, so he downloaded the Last Friend app. Maybe someone could show him where the \u201cold Rufus\u201d was. The match came a little after 3 a.m. Rufus had a bike. Mateo had a few dollars. Neither had much time, and telling you any more than that would ruin this futuristically-plausible tale. No, you need to read \u201cThey Both Die at the End\u201d for yourself. Of course, you know what happens: the title doesn\u2019t lie, but what occurs between the call and the end is phenomenal storytelling. Author Adam Silvera takes a bleak idea and spins it into a tale of friendship and caution-throwing and, because other characters are like spokes of a Mateo-and-Rufus wheel, we also see how small actions resonate in other lives through casual connections that are almost as meaningful as the purposeful ones. For sure, that\u2019s heartbreaking, but it\u2019s also darkly funny and oddly uplifting. There\u2019s also a certain \u201cwhat if…\u201d that lingers for a long time after you\u2019ve closed the cover, which makes \u201cThey Both Die at the End\u201d a great thought-provoking read for all ages. Start it and you\u2019ll be hooked, all the way to… The End.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The End. The vast majority of us don\u2019t know when it will come and, though it\u2019s life\u2019s last big surprise, we don\u2019t like to think about it. Yes, you will die, but what if you knew it was coming \u2013 today? Would you reach for your family or, as in the new novel \u201cThey Both<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":18298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bookworm-sez"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18300,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18293\/revisions\/18300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}