The look is immediately sleek and stylish, from the TV themed menu and interlude screens to highly polished sprites, CGs, and environments. Find Love or Die Trying doesn’t boast the subversion of DDLC or the character depth of Katawa Shoujo, but it has a lot going for it. Love them or hate them, Katawa Shoujo and Doki Doki Literature Club! are among the most significant original English language visual novels to date, and neither costs anything.
There’s precedent for free visual novels achieving a great deal of success. We might not have killed anyone yet, but watch enough truTV and it feels like it’s only a matter of time. Could this be the next visual novel to come out of nowhere and light the world on fire? The reality show premise hits close to home. Find Love or Die Trying has been picking up some buzz, and with the killer hook and affordable price of “free”, it’s not hard to see why. Date the most beautiful and eligible bachelorettes to find your soulmate! Win the hearts of the girls and audiences at home! But if things don’t work out? Well, then you die. That’s the premise of Auden Jin’s Find Love or Die Trying. Sounds like a dream, right? But what if there was one big catch? This isn't a book that's going to work for readers who demand a happily ever after, but it's such a thought-provoking and sweet read nonetheless.Ever wished you were on one of those dating shows? You’d have beautiful women tripping over themselves to win your affection, get to know them over romantic dates in a tropical paradise, and in the end, ride off into the sunset with your one true love.
In some ways, the book is reminiscent of The Sun Is Also a Star, because it's about one powerful day in which two teens change each other's lives - and also because Silvera offers several short chapters from other characters' perspectives, always starting with whether Death-Cast has or has not called that person. The story doesn't feel like a race against time, and in fact unfolds at a slow, thoughtful pace, with the exception of a few sequences, like when bicyclist Rufus is running (well, riding) from the police or when he and Mateo are surviving (against the odds) a couple of deadly situations. They do small, quiet things (visit Mateo's dad in the hospital, his mom in the cemetery), as well as take virtual-reality trips around the world, and sing karaoke.
Instead, Silvera's characters benefit from some of the perks of being on Death-Cast's list, like discounts and special Decker-only activities. The title isn't a spoiler, because it's not the point of the book. No one can get around death once Death-Cast calls. As Mateo makes clear early on, even a former president who hid himself in a secret shelter ended up assassinated by the Secret Service. The premise isn't entirely new, but the way he implements it is, because Mateo and Rufus don't spend the precious time they have in their final day trying to find a desperate way around it. Like his other books, this one involves LGBTQ New York City teens, and as in his debut, there's a technological feature that changes the way people live. Adam Silvera is one of YA's most interesting writers, because he doesn't shy away from death, grief, or loss. The title might tell readers what to expect, but there's a heartbreaking, heartwarming journey before the emotional end that will inspire teens to live bigger and better. Mateo and Rufus help each other make their last day a memorable one. The two "Deckers" (what everyone who's been alerted is colloquially called) end up meeting via an app called "Last Friend," which matches up people to spend their final day together. Rufus eventually gets the call, and just wants to spend it with his foster parents and siblings (his parents and sister died in a car crash a few months earlier). In another part of New York, 17-year-old foster kid Rufus Emeterio initially misses his Death-Cast call, because he was too busy beating up his ex-girlfriend's jerk of a new boyfriend. It's horrifying timing, because 18-year-old Mateo's father (his mom died in childbirth) is in a coma, which means other than Mateo's best friend, single mom Lidia, there's really no one to say goodbye to or support him on his final day on Earth. Introverted New York teen Mateo Torrez receives his Death-Cast call (there's even a special ring so you know it's them) at 12:22 a.m. Adam Silvera's third novel, THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END, takes place in an alternate contemporary universe that's basically the same except for one life-altering technological advancement: A company called Death-Cast mysteriously knows everyone who's going to die in any given day (but not how or when) and alerts each of those people somewhere between midnight and 3 a.m.