They Both Die at the End

Cute book, breezy read given the grim subject matter. The sci-fi premise is sort of silly but fortunately the author doesn't spend much time dwelling on how it works. The protagonists know they're going to die end of the day, that's the setup. Fine!

What works best in the book is the sweet relationship built between the main characters, Mateo's emotional growth, Rufus' generous love.

But structurally the book had a lot of frustrations. There's an ambitious thing in having interlocking POV characters that was kind of interesting but a little hard to follow. Some of the narrative has some clumsy continuity problems. And as a romance novel the balance is off, nothing romantic even happens for 2/3 of the book! Then towards the end the author chastely elides any depiction of sex, replacing it with an unexplained 45 minute nap (!). Maybe that's a necessity for the genre but it just felt like a strange omission.

Overall it was a fun quick read though. I'm probably 30+ years older than the target audience but eh, that's why I read it. I sure wish I had gay young adult romance like this when I was the right age.