It's not to say this isn't a good book. It's a very good book - I think. The writing is very careful and reminds me a bit of David Levithan. The problem I had was that I was in the mood for something a bit more ... plotty. And given that this book is about two characters who are about to die, I thought I was on to a bit of a winner.
Instead, I got a book about two teenage boys who called by a mysterious government (?) agency to say that they are going to die that day. This isn't a surprise to them - everyone who dies gets a phone call just after midnight to give them the heads-up that they have less than 24 hours to go.
The two boys take it in turns to narrate the events of their last 24 hours and how they reconcile themselves, or not, to dying. It's quite a gentle book and I found it really interesting how their lives intersected with so many others. I liked Mateo and Rufus and I felt like I really knew them by the end of the story.
Plot-wise, what I wanted to happen was for Rufus and Mateo to use their last day to infiltrate Death-Cast, get caught, thrown in a dungeon, escape, have a car chase, get double-crossed, caught again and then have a big showdown with the evil mastermind behind Death-Cast who would turn out to be like one of their parents or the president of the USA or something.
This is not what happened.
What actually happens is that Mateo and Rufus decide to have just a really nice day of eating in diners, cycling around New York and singing karaoke. Which is fine, except it ended up just dragging on a bit. Nothing interesting really happened.
And that would have been okay, except for the whole idea of Death-Cast. How do they know who is going to die? Spoiler alert: we never find out. And I think I remember the MC wondering exactly the same thing. I found it really hard to get behind the idea that people would just accept being called to say their number was up and no one would try and investigate exactly *how* this whole thing worked.
The existence of Death-Cast sets up some interesting philosophical questions about predestination and causality, but ultimately because we never find out how Death-Cast works, these questions are never really answered.
And I know that the nature of Death-Cast isn't the point of the book. The point of the book is, if you knew you only had 24 hours to live, what would you do with it? it's a parable about living your life to the fullest. I get that. But I just couldn't get past the whole thing of how Death-Cast worked.
I think if you're looking for a gentle, thought-provoking book, this could be a winner for you. It wasn't really for me, but I could see how others might like it.
2.5 stars