The Bookmark is back with its monthly bookish gathering! This tradition had been postponed until further notice because of hurricane Maria but came back in time for the new year. The Bookmark is a local bookstore in Puerto Rico located within the San Patricio shopping mall. The Epic Reads Book Club is held once a month, in the last Wednesday of the month, and it is run by the bookstore; however, Epic Reads is the proud organizer that collaborates with the bookstore and its management in order to bring these books to its lovely reader. As well, due to the collaboration, the book club becomes more than a simple discussion because the attendees get to Skype with the author and have a Q&A session! Members of the Her Campus UPR chapter were able to attend last night’s book club and many feels were involved.
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The book for last night’s discussion was They Both Die at the End by New York Times bestselling author, Adam Silvera. It tells the story of Mateo Torres, an eighteen-year-old Puerto Rican, and Rufus Emeterio, a seventeen-year-old Cuban-American after they have been told by Death-Cast that they will be dead within the next 24 hours. They both end up finding each other through the Last Friends app and proceed to make the most out of their last hours.
This book was going to be the book of the month for November’s book club, but it was pushed back and moved to January due to the complications of the hurricane, lack of signal for various months, and lack of stable electricity.
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As you can tell by the brief summary, this is a book with the promise of an emotional rollercoaster ride that makes you reflect on your own life, fall in love with these characters as if they were real people you wanted to comfort, and feel the same anxiety they felt during their last hours without knowing when their death would come. Adam Silvera shared these emotions and offered abundant enthusiasm with the readers by sharing: why he wrote the characters to be mostly Latino (he’s Puerto Rican! One of us!), wink-winks, the possibility of a certain character “barreling through the air,” the wonders of knowing you made your readers cry, potential Black Mirror episodes with rude DM’s, all the fangirling over Love, Simon, and many many more.
The next book is Wicked Like a Wildfire by Lana Popović being held February 28th at the San Patricio store since the Plaza Carolina location is still closed. All in all, if you have the chance of attending one of the Bookmark’s epic book clubs, Her Campus UPR highly recommends.
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Image 1 via The Bookmark PR on Twitter