**The Snapchat Original series, Denton's Deathdate, is here—check it out!**
Get ready to die laughing: this is an outrageously funny ride through the last hours of a teenager’s life as he searches for love, meaning, answers, and (just maybe) a way to live on. Denton Little’s Deathdate takes place in a world exactly like our own except that everyone knows the day on which they will die. For Denton, that’s in just two days—the day of his senior prom.
Despite his early deathdate, Denton has always wanted to live a normal life, but his final days are filled with dramatic firsts. First hangover. First sex. First love triangle—as the first sex seems to have happened not with his adoring girlfriend, but with his best friend’s hostile sister. (Though he’s not totally sure—see, first hangover.) His anxiety builds when he discovers a strange purple rash making its way up his body. Is this what will kill him? And then a strange man shows up at his funeral, claiming to have known Denton’s long-deceased mother, and warning him to beware of suspicious government characters. . . . Suddenly Denton’s life is filled with mysterious questions and precious little time to find the answers.
Fall in love with Denton Little!
"Rubin is really funny but like John Green, he manages to be poignant at the same time. You'll laugh out loud while you read this, but you're probably going to tear up a bit too." --Bustle
"The dialogue is witty and raunchy, the plot is uniquely twisted, and the ending is to die for. This book will fly off the shelves."--VOYA
“Lance Rubin creates a world in which (almost) everyone can answer the question, ‘What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?’ and holy s*#! the answers are hilarious. I don’t think I’ve laughed at death so much in a long, long time. Read this book, it’ll have you dying.” —Isabel Quintero, Morris Award-winning author of Gabi, A Girl in Pieces
"Hilarious, thought-provoking, irreverent, unforgettable. . . . Live your own death, Dent. We love you." --Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of Dairy Queen
“If Six Feet Under had been created by John Hughes: that’s Denton Little’s Deathdate.” —Tim Federle, author of The Great American Whatever
“Wildly funny, brilliantly weird, and achingly heartfelt.” —Becky Albertalli, Morris Award–winning author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
"Highly original, fantastically entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny, Denton Little's Deathdate is a wild romp through a night like no other." --Jennifer E. Smith, author of The Geography of You and Me
"The tweaked contemporary setting, irreverent end-of-life humor, and big, existential questions make this a good pick for fans of John Corey Whaley’s Noggin." -- Publishers Weekly
So, this book has a whole host of things that made me really enjoy it. Let’s talk about them!
First, everyone in this world knows when they’ll die. It’s just science. Too bad if that isn’t a good day, or you aren’t ready. “Sorry, not sorry Denton, that you’re going to bite it on the day of your prom”, says science. Obviously, having a deathdate at a young age is a real downer, but Denton is just trying to live what’s left of his life. And he is a funny, witty, and all too real teenage guy. He thinks about all the stuff teenage guys do (well, not ever having been a teenage guy, it’s what I assume they think of, anyway), and he has the same worries and insecurities as everyone else. Only his kind of won’t matter the next day, since he will be dead and such.
All the characters are great in their own right, too. Denton’s friend Paolo and his family are fantastic, and Denton’s own family had me laughing too. They all just seemed so realistic, so much like someone I might know in my life, that it all worked so well. Denton’s relationships with these people are a huge focus,of course, because I think anyone who’s about to die is going to focus on that, no?
Amidst the humor though, it is thought provoking as well. What would you do if you knew when you were going to die? Would you want to know? Would it be awful? Of course, I asked myself those questions a lot throughout the book.
And just when I thought it was just going to be a clever book about Denton’s last day… there is a mystery! Which of course leads to some action, and a plot twist, and more ways for Denton and his friends to get themselves into a whole new set of ridiculous circumstances. That’s where I’d been concerned: How can the book end without me knowing all the things!? But alas, there is to be another, so I can just wait around impatiently to find out the answers to my questions.
Bottom Line: I liked this book a lot. It’s fun, it’s charming, it has a great cast of characters, and it’s one I definitely recommend.
