REVIEW: The First to Die at the End by Adam Silvera

Source: Goodreads

Hi everyone,

Here is a new review of a recently finished book. This is The First to Die at the End by Adam Silvera, the prequel of They Both Die at the End (TBDATE) of the Death-Cast series. This review may contain what you consider minor spoilers).

I had quite high expectations since I loved They Both Die at the End when I first read it years ago. This book wasn't it though for me. Maybe it wasn't just great, maybe as I have grown older I have become more critical of what I read and my thought about those books. It honestly makes be wonder what I would think now if I read TBDATE for the first time. 

Now, this books follows two teenagers. One is Orion, a boy with a herat condition, who expects to die any day. The other, Valentino, just moved to NYC to start a new life. He is ready to launch is modelling career, and live life proudly as a gay man. It is the night of the Death-Cast launch and both boys are unaware how this night will change their lives. 

First of all, whil reading I quite quickly noticed that we were not going to get any more information on Death-Cast than was previously made available to us. The story still keeps it very vague, even though we even follow the CEO of Death-Cast for a while. Since this book was so much thicker than TBDATE, I was honestly expecting atleast a little more on how Death-Cast works. But no...

Since I already mentiond that we also follow the CEO of Death-Cast for a while, let's talk about the amount of characters we follow. Right now from the top of my head we get the POV's from at least 15 different characters, and I know that I have been forgetting some. It was simply too much. Some chapters were unnecessary. The storyline would have been the same without those chapters, now it felt like a waste of paper. I also saw what the author was trying to do by incorporating the younger versions of the TBDATE main characters, but it just didn't add much and felt forced. 

The characters themselves I quite liked. I like their personalities and the stuff they did in NYC. But then, the writing simply didn't make me feel like I was invested. I wanted to be rooting for these characters. Keeping hope that Valentino would survive, that his sister would make it in time, that his parents would turn around. But I honestly didn't care much, it even felt a little predictable. I knew where this was going, I saw from the start how these different storylines were destined to come together toward the end of the book.

Well, and the very last thing I was frustrated about: What do you mean Orion had a heartattack but was allowed to leave the hospital the same day, not too many hours later... That just felt so unreal. 

In the end I decided to rate this 2.75 stars on my Storygraph and Goodreads. This simply wasn't what I expected. I feel like it could have been so much better. This also made me decide that I won't be picking up any other books in the Death-Cast series. I think I can spend my time better reading other books.