They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera - 2 Stars

[Elara]

In a parallel world where Death-Cast informs people of their final day via a single phone call: 24 hours to live, grieve, reflect, rebel or redeem. An app, Last Friend, exists to offer a final companion — a stranger with whom to share the slow falling of your last sunset.

The ticking-clock dread of knowing the sun will set and not rise again for you. The emotional gut-punch isn’t in the outcome, but in the quiet question that lingers beneath it: Would it make a difference if you knew your goodbye was on a schedule?

With the outcome revealed in both title and blurb, the narrative burden shifts from suspense to substance. Now, the story must earn its inevitability.

Writing a novel from this premise is a high-wire act — conceptually thrilling but demanding in execution.

In sum: They Both Die at the End is a novel of unrealized potential — a breathtaking concept delivered in a whisper. Instead of peeling back the human psyche in its final 24 hours, there's an odd tension between the gravity of death and the simplicity of the story’s movement, the result is that nothing surprises and little truly lingers.

The stage is set for a fierce exploration of mortality, love, fear, regret — the raw material of being human. And yet, what unfolds feels strangely quiet. Beautiful in concept. Hollow in impact.

The story wants us to feel the tragedy of time running out — but it never fully lets us sit in the fear, the paralysis, the recklessness, the humanity of it.

It reminds us that life is fleeting, that love matters, that moments count. But those truths, while noble, are not new. And they aren’t enough on their own. A concept this bold requires more: more psychological depth, more character complexity, more courage. It needs to ask harder questions.

The book never fully commits to the psychological disarray, the desperation and dread that makes the awareness of death so profoundly destabilizing.