This book has such an intriguing concept but, in my opinion, falls totally flat in execution. I feel like its important to note that I am a BOOK CRIER. I cried at almost every book I’ve read this year. I cry at commercials where like grandpas learn English to talk to their new grandkids or any lesbians get married or literally anything with a dog. I am SO EASILY manipulated into crying. I did not cry at this book where our two main characters DIE.
I can’t even say that its because I knew their fate because I cried at Song of Achilles and its not like there was any surprises there. I was just completely unattached to these two characters as people.
So in this world, a service called Death Cast exists that calls everyone who is going to die within the following day gets a phone call that says so. Our two main characters Matteo and Rufus, get their phone calls for the day predicting their eventual demise.
There is some interesting world building around this concept mostly hinting at manipulative consumerism and capitalism when people know they are facing death. There are so many ‘services’ and ‘experiences’ that are used in order to make money off the soon-to-be dead. However, I don’t think the author took this concept far enough. This was all background noise to the focus on our characters (who were frankly not that interesting to focus on). I ended up with about five million questions about the world itself and not caring about the main characters at all.
The characters themselves felt designed to manipulate me into crying. One of them is an orphan who was the sole survivor of a family accident, the other’s mom died in childbirth and he only had his father who is now in a coma. His best friend is a single mother who’s baby daddy died tragically trying to reach her. This is TOO MUCH. It makes the tragedy of their own deaths feel hollow. Teenagers don’t die a lot, so surrounding them with other teenagers that did just made it less impactful.
Other than being walking tragedies, the characters just never really felt real to me. Especially Mateo. Mateo is basically a ‘save the cat’ walking cliché. We are just subject to scene after scene of how ‘good and pure’ he is in the most saccharine and overly done way. It made him feel like an incomplete two-dimensional person. Spoiler for a specific scene but as they start on their joint death day Mateo finds a dead bird in the road and INSISTS on moving and burying it. This is supposed to represent how caring he is. But what it really seemed to me was like wasting another dude’s precious few hours of living (especially since Rufus basically bends over backwards to do everything Mateo wants and Mateo can’t even be bothered to step into a train car for Rufus). I just want everyone to know if they are predicted to die, they can step over my decapitated body and go to a theme park instead. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME BURYING ME. Just to be clear, I love birds. I take of birds FOR A LIVING. I was making diets for birds while I listened to this part of the book. I have cried over the deaths of birds that I loved and cared for. I would not bury a NYC bird on my last day alive. Also, I hope he stopped every block for what I am sure are DEAD BIRDS EVERYWHERE because it’s a city and birds die.
Wow guys sorry I had a lot of feelings about that bird scene apparently.
Anyways, Rufus felt much more rounded out. He was flawed and a bit more interesting but his interest in Mateo was not understandable to me and therefore, I couldn’t really connect with him either.
Overall, a good concept written with uninteresting characters which made the book feel weak and unimpactful.
Bonus – some world concept questions I have
Deathcast seemed to cause like 90% of the deaths we saw so would it be better not to have it all? Did deaths decrease or increase in any way? One of the deaths was violent and went out killing others – wouldn’t that death not exist without it? Same with a serial killer who targeted people on their way out.
Wouldn’t it make sense for the police or any services to track death cast locations so that no large group of Deckers conglomerate anywhere? Like what would have happened at 9/11? Would all those people not go to work and go other places and die in different ways? Would they be able to recognize that something was going to happen at the twin towers and stop it because so many died from the same place? But the people still die?
Has murder increased or decreased since death cast? Has solving crimes increased or decreased?
Is death cast the owner of these experiences and last minute buys and deals? Is that why they do this? How do they make money for employees if not?
If people know they are immortal for the day wouldn’t that increase super risky behaviors?