Reading order
by Adam Silvera
Adam Silvera's Death-Cast series: 3 books + 1 announced. Read them in the order they were published, or in the order the story happens. We've reviewed every one.
On September 5, Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio receive calls from Death-Cast, a company that predicts imminent deaths: they will die today. The two strangers connect through the Last Friend app and meet up to spend their final hours together, facing unfinished business and discovering what it means to truly live.
On the night Death-Cast first goes live, Orion Pagan and Valentino Prince meet in Times Square. Orion has a serious heart condition and signed up to know what is coming. Valentino has a promising future and registered only after his twin sister nearly died. When the first End Day calls go out, one boy receives a call and one does not, and they choose to spend the day together.
Paz Dario waits nightly for a Death-Cast call, hoping it will end a life he feels trapped in faking. After a devastating day, he decides to force the issue himself. Alano, whose family built the death-notification service, faces threats from a violent group called the Death Guard. The two strangers meet when one saves the other's life, and they must navigate mental health crises and mortal danger together.
Announced for 2026. The publisher hasn't shared a description yet; we'll add one when they do.
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Our take
Book by book, from our reviews. Ratings are Amazon readers' for the edition we link, so counts vary by printing.
Book 1
4.6 · 42,655 Amazon ratings (this edition)
Worth reading if you can sit with a slow-building, reflective single-day structure and want a story that is more about what you do with the time left than about regret.
Skip it if you want a fast, tightly plotted read or a realistic take on the Death-Cast premise, since one teenage reviewer found parts of the plot boring, the adventures dull and the concept corny, and another felt the title's warning blunted the emotional punch.
Prequel
4.6 · 2,940 Amazon ratings (this edition)
Worth reading if you want a long, tearjerking YA romance that treats the heartbreak as the point and uses its 500-plus pages for a city's worth of connected lives.
Skip it if you want Death-Cast's mechanics explained, prefer a tight single-thread story, or found the original's simplicity its main charm, since the cooler reviews fault forced cameos, a predictable arc and a bland Valentino.
Book 3
4.5 · 780 Amazon ratings (this edition)
Worth reading if you can handle intense content and don't mind a 720-page book with a slower, internal opening section, since reviews are broadly positive that it delivers suspense and emotional weight.
About the author
Since bursting onto the literary scene in 2015 with his debut More Happy Than Not, #1 New York Times bestselling author Adam Silvera has become one of young adult fiction's most beloved voices. Born in 1990, this American author captured readers worldwide with his 2017 novel They Both Die at the End, which experienced an extraordinary second wave of popularity when TikTok's BookTok community discovered it in 2020,...
Also by Adam Silvera: More Happy Than Not
Adam Silvera discusses 'The Survivor Wants to Die at the End', detailing its characters, premise, and place in the Death-Cast universe.
Uploaded by Headliner Chicago, 2025 · Watch on YouTube ·
Silvera shares that although the 700-page novel took a year and a half to write, readers have been finishing it in a matter of hours, which he considers a huge compliment.
Silvera notes that setting the prequel in 2010 required historical research on details like whether FaceTime existed yet and the price of New York City MetroCards.
Silvera shares that he began writing fan fiction around age 11 and completed an entire eighth Harry Potter book titled 'Harry Potter and the Demise of Hogwarts' before the published series ended.
“I wrote an eighth Harry Potter book before all the books were out.”
On The Survivor Wants to Die at the End
If you like this series
Picked in our review of They Both Die at the End: what to read next.
More Happy Than Not
Adam Silvera · also by the author
Same author, same emotional gut-punch — a Bronx teen uses memory-erasure tech to survive grief and identity, with Silvera's signature blend of heartbreak and hope.
Our review →
History Is All You Left Me
Adam Silvera · also by the author
Silvera's second novel — grief told out of order, same raw intimacy, but focused on a surviving ex-boyfriend processing an impossible loss.
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
A woman trapped between life and death explores every unlived version of herself — same urgent question about what makes a life worth finishing.
Our review →
The Sun Is Also a Star
Nicola Yoon
Two teens, one day in New York, alternating voices — the same ticking-clock romance shape with fate instead of death.
Questions
There are three Death-Cast books so far, including the prequel The First to Die at the End, with No One Knows Who Dies at the End announced.
Start with They Both Die at the End and read them in publication order: They Both Die at the End (2017), The First to Die at the End (2022), The Survivor Wants to Die at the End (2025).
We'd start with They Both Die at the End. The First to Die at the End is a prequel: its story comes earlier, but it was published in 2022, five years after They Both Die at the End. Reading in publication order meets the story the way its first readers did. The story-order view above shows where it falls in time.
They Both Die at the End, published in 2017. On September 5, Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio receive calls from Death-Cast, a company that predicts imminent deaths: they will die today. The two strangers connect through the Last Friend app and meet up to spend their final hours together, facing unfinished business and discovering what it means to truly live.
The latest is The Survivor Wants to Die at the End (2025). Next is No One Knows Who Dies at the End, due 2026.
Yes, all three: They Both Die at the End, The First to Die at the End, The Survivor Wants to Die at the End.
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Looking for Adam Silvera's other books? See every series and standalone.
