Hello and happy Saturday. This is a new installment of the “This should’ve been left as a stand-alone” collection. Look, I love Adam Silvera. I’ve loved the novels he’s written by himself and I loved the ones he wrote with Becky Albertalli. I distinctly remember getting a headache because of how much I cried after finishing More Happy Than Not, and I can still feel unsettled when thinking about They Both Die at the End.

The First to Die at the End, though? It’s a prequel that feels like fan service. And the worst part is that there’s a third book, a sequel to this prequel, which is in my wishlist, but my hopes aren’t high at all. I think you’d need to read They Both Die at the End to understand what the sequel is about, but I don’t think you need to read this to understand the first book that was published. Then again, you can read all of them if you so desire.