Now this is a subject that I really enjoy covering: books. In this episode I chat with a teenager who is a voracious reader — and does she ever know death-themed books! She gives us the run-down on her six favorite books about death, and by the end of it, I challenge you to choose one to read. From settings of fantasy worlds, to cemetery plots; from characters who are the Son of Death, to terminally ill people falling in love… these books are exploring this theme in all kinds of innovative ways. Listen as we discuss: They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera, Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas, You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao, I Fell in Love with Hope by Lancali, Masters of Death by Olivie Blake, The Ghosts We Keep by Mason Deaver.

Transcript:

Diane Hullet: [00:00:00] Hi, I am Diane Hullet and you’re listening to the Best Life Best Death podcast, and I’ve got a really fun conversation today. Welcome to Mia Hope AdGate. Hi, I’m Mia Hope, and Jade is my mother, and she’s a death doula. Yes, very cool. And Jade’s a death doula that I’ve had on my program a couple of times.

She’s a holistic death educator. And you know, one of Jade’s real strengths is her connection to books and how much she shares about books with people. So, you know, your mom and I talked about books about death and loss for young kids, and in that conversation. I, we kind of got into that. We, we couldn’t talk about every single age of kids, so we thought we better just limit it to younger kids.

And then Jade said, well, you know, the person who’s really an expert on young adult books is my daughter Mia, Jade, not Mia, Jade, my daughter Mia. Hope. And so anyway, we cooked at this idea that you’d be my, one of my guests. And so I’m very happy to have you here. So [00:01:00] welcome. So you know, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Like, what do you love to read? Do you occasionally read? What’s 

Mia Hope Adgate: your 

Diane Hullet: deal? 

Mia Hope Adgate: Well, I love to read. I love all sorts of books, but recently I’ve been really into fantasy more so than I have in the past, but I’ve got quite a few collection of books that I think are really closely tied to death and death related works.

So I thought it’d be really nice to share those. 

Diane Hullet: Fabulous. I think it’s really great. So yeah, I think just sort of launch in, like, give us a little description of the book and, and you know, what the theme is. It, and then, and then we’ll kind of talk about why this matters, that that young adults can even read this stuff.

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah, sure. Okay. So the first book I have is I’ve got, actually I’ve got a hardcover copy. It’s they both die at the end. You’ve probably heard of it before. It’s a book, it’s called, it’s called, they both Die at the End and yeah, it’s called, they both Die at the end. They give you the little spoiler at the beginning, [00:02:00] which is a little upsetting, but, you 

Diane Hullet: know, but I sort of love that it’s a different way to read a book when you totally know what, where you’re headed.

Right? 

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah. Well. They make you think that they’re not gonna die at the end, but they absolutely do die at the end. I don’t think that’s a spoiler or anything. ’cause it says it on the book cover. Yeah, it’s in the title. The book is about two guys and they are living in a like dystopian world where everybody knows 24 hours before they die.

So they get a phone call and it’s like, Hey, you’re gonna die today. And both of the guys get the phone call and they’re both like totally unprepared and they’re freaking out. And so they meet each other on this website and they both know that they’re gonna die today. So that’s the whole premise of the book.

Diane Hullet: Wow. And are they themselves like teens or twenties or something? Are they youngish? They’re about 17, 18. And do you get any information about how you’ll die or you just get the call that it’s gonna happen? 

Mia Hope Adgate: No, the, the, you just get [00:03:00] the call and you’ll die in the next 24 hours. It could be an hour after you get the call.

It could be very 24 hours after you get the call. You have no idea. 

Diane Hullet: Okay. That just makes my heart pound, like, that’s so intriguing. So, okay. So that was, you liked it, you loved it. What’s your rating on it? Oh, 

Mia Hope Adgate: I loved this book. It was super sad though. It made me cry. It’s definitely in my like at least top 20 books.

Diane Hullet: And so the whole course of the book is them sort of dealing with this. Mm-hmm. And what kind of insights do they have? 

Mia Hope Adgate: Well, they’re both throughout the book, they’re both trying to get stuff done because they were too afraid to do it in the past. And now that they know they only have 24 hours left to live, they’re going through and trying to like fill off their bucket list, stuff like that.

And they. I mean, obviously if you get the, if you get a call, you’re gonna be freaking out, but they [00:04:00] actually handle it pretty well. They don’t talk about, they try to actually avoid talking about how they’re gonna die until the end, which then they have a couple conversations. I don’t wanna spoil anything where they discuss how they’re gonna die, and it really, it’s really meaningful.

Diane Hullet: Beautiful. That seems like an amazing book. Would you, I mean, that seems like a book adults would benefit from and be interested in, not just young adults. 

Mia Hope Adgate: It’s definitely geared towards young adults, but I think that a lot of people would really enjoy it. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. Anybody who likes fantasy would would go into it.

Wow. Anything else you wanna say about that one? 

Mia Hope Adgate: I don’t think so. I, I really love this book, so 

Diane Hullet: I love it. Give us the title and the author again. 

Mia Hope Adgate: It’s, they both Die at the end by SRA and sra. Awesome. 

Diane Hullet: I have to get a pen. Write these down. Okay. I’m ready for the next one. [00:05:00] 

Mia Hope Adgate: Okay. So this next one is called I Fell in Love with Hope.

It’s got a really pretty cover. It’s about a group of terminally ill hospital patients. Teens and the whole book is set in the hospital and it’s, it’s pretty accurate. I think. They, sorry I haven’t read this book in a hot minute. It’s, I, I mean, I love this book so much. I have annotations throughout it all.

You can see like I’ve got, yeah. 

Diane Hullet: Oh, you totally loved it. Yeah, but you just read it a while ago. 

Mia Hope Adgate: I, yeah, but I mean, I, I 

Diane Hullet: really 

Mia Hope Adgate: liked 

Diane Hullet: it, but just what you said is really compelling. So a group of teens in a hospital, and it’s called, they fell in love with hope. I mean, I assume they’re terminally ill. So this also ends in a lot of death.

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah, they don’t, I don’t think they end up dying at the end, but it’s heavily implied that they will, because I mean, most of them are. I think a couple of their friends died throughout the book. And it’s about these teens who [00:06:00] are trying to deal with the fact that they are going to die and probably before they reach the age of maturity.

And it’s them coping with that loss and figuring out how to make friends and how to still, how fun while they’re dying. 

Diane Hullet: Amazing. These are, these are both books you’ve said, sound absolutely amazing, and these are only two of the six you’re gonna tell us about. Yeah. 

Mia Hope Adgate: This book is really beautifully written.

I had lots of annotations because the way the author writes is really symbolic and it’s very flowery language. 

Diane Hullet: Beautiful. And does it focus on one 

Mia Hope Adgate: main character or talk about a few? I believe it focuses on one main character. The main character falls in love though, and so it focuses on her love too.

Although most of the side characters all have their own story and so 

Diane Hullet: yeah. So that sounds like a really, really. Just moving [00:07:00] story on so many levels. I’m struck by, you know, there’s some really amazing people on Instagram who’ve, when they’re terminally ill, they start to post about their illness and about their treatment and about their feelings and you know, people are so moved by those kinds of stories and I think terminally ill young people are especially touching to us.

So a, a whole book that explores that I think sounds amazing. Alright, what’s book number three? 

Mia Hope Adgate: Book number three is kind of like a wild card. It’s called Masters of Death. It’s a fantasy book that is about a young, well teenage boy who is the son of death. Death is a character in the book, which really is interesting because in most of these books, death isn’t a character.

So it’s really nice to read that. I mean, in this book, it’s a totally different point of view. 

Diane Hullet: Totally. And it’s not, and it’s not Death talking, it’s the son of death. 

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah. So the book is, [00:08:00] they are, the son of death is immortal and he makes these mystical friends and they go and play the game of death. So even though death is his father.

They, they play this game because the moral of the game is that if you win the game, you get one wish, but no one ever wins the game. 

Diane Hullet: Aha. Sounds like life, 

Mia Hope Adgate: right? Yeah. I mean there are very select few who do win the game. 

Diane Hullet: Ah-huh. What did you like about this one? 

Mia Hope Adgate: Well I love the fantasy and this one really leans into the whole fantasy mystical thing.

There is a little bit of romance in there that I really enjoyed as well, and it was a little. More lighthearted than the rest of it. 

Diane Hullet: So Neat. That sounds really like I, I always wonder who are these authors who come up with these super creative ideas of the son of death? 

Mia Hope Adgate: Well, actually, this book was on my mom’s bookshelf and she was like, oh, I [00:09:00] haven’t read it yet.

And I was like, it looks kind of good. Like I’ll read it. And I read it and I loved it. 

Diane Hullet: All right. Light summer reading for the listeners, master Masters with the plural. Master of death. Okay, lean in. 

Mia Hope Adgate: Okay, I’ve got the next one here. This one is Cemetery Boys. It’s also got a really pretty cover. I adored this book.

I really loved it. I first got to know this book through my, I’m part of Wilco Iris, which is an impact committee dealing with queer youth. This was on our book club list, and I totally forgot about the book club and was freaking out like the day of, and I was like, oh no. And so I read this book in like a day and a half and I loved it.

This one is about a young teen. He’s about 15, 14. He lives in a community where they can speak to the dead. They like live in a graveyard, they speak to the [00:10:00] dead and every teen has to pass this right of ritual to get their death speaking abilities. And he was prohibited to have the ritual because he was transgender.

And so the focus of the book is him. He finds a ghost and it’s like, oh, this is my chance to do the ritual. But stuff keeps going wrong. 

Diane Hullet: Aha. Interesting. So an intersection of death and transgender and discrimination. 

Mia Hope Adgate: Mm-hmm. And he falls in love with the ghost, but the, he’s a ghost. And so it focuses on, you know, kind of a grief about falling in love with someone and realizing that they’re gonna be gone in just a few weeks.

Diane Hullet: Beautiful. That sounds amazing. I love 

Mia Hope Adgate: this book. 

Diane Hullet: I loved it so much. Yeah, it sounds like it brings up, like it touches on a lot of different issues and just takes, it’s almost like it takes issues of current teens and puts them in this alternate reality. [00:11:00] Right, which I think is an interesting way to explore both transgender issues and death issues, 

Mia Hope Adgate: and it combined it in the book really well.

Diane Hullet: Which, you know, it’s sort of, I don’t know, it’s like how do, how do we talk about impermanence? You know, how do we talk about things changing in transformation? Like, I’m struck by that with the first one you said too. The one called, they both die at the end. Like, what if we had this awareness of our death, how would that impact, or what if we could speak to the dead?

How would that impact? Our living. Yeah, it’s, it’s such creative premises these authors have come up with. Great. Yeah. I actually 

Mia Hope Adgate: have this next one up here is kind of focusing on that impermanence and speaking to the dead a little bit. It’s called, you’ve reached Sam. It’s, it just got really popular, but I had it before.

It was super popular and I. Cried so much you’ve reached. Sam is about like a 17 or [00:12:00] 18-year-old who had a boyfriend who got hit with a car and died in the car accident, and she is so strut up with her grief that she begins calling his phone line to see if he’ll pick up and one day he finally does pick up.

Wow. And throughout the book, we never find out if it’s, if she’s hallucinating because of the grief or if it’s a magical element where he really is picking up 

Diane Hullet: Interesting. So then she can talk to him through the phone. Mm-hmm. 

Mia Hope Adgate: But so she can talk to him only throughout the phone, 

Diane Hullet: but he’s crossed over 

Mia Hope Adgate: in some way.

He’s gone. Everybody else believes that he’s dead. And throughout the whole book, he’s trying to convince her to let him go. He’s like always in these. He’s like, you can hang on to me for a second, but you gotta let me go. 

Diane Hullet: What a metaphor, right? What a truth. 

Mia Hope Adgate: This one really focuses on the meaningfulness of wanting to have just one more [00:13:00] conversation after somebody’s gone.

Diane Hullet: Yes. 

Mia Hope Adgate: So like if you wish you could just pick up the phone and call that one person to have one last conversation with them. 

Diane Hullet: Yes. Which, which is such a common feeling in grief, right? 

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah. 

Diane Hullet: And that this author made that the premise of the whole book, it’s again, so creative, so tapping into something so human about the death and grief and loss experience, and then stretching it out into a whole novel.

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah. And in this book, the Grief is really well portrayed because the main character instead of just going through this long period of grieving and then totally stopping, it comes a little more naturally. 

Diane Hullet: Mm-hmm. 

Mia Hope Adgate: Like, she will go through her grief in sections, kind of, and then she sees something and it brings back a whole nother wave, kind of how grief works in real life.

Diane Hullet: Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Right. It’s not, it’s not a [00:14:00] neat package or a neat linear line. 

Mia Hope Adgate: It’s not something that you can just do for a week or two and then stop, 

Diane Hullet: right. Or turn off and on. It’s, mm-hmm. People often are impacted by, as you said, an external thing happens in a tsunami, hits you. Yeah. Yeah. 

Mia Hope Adgate: Okay. The last book I have.

Is called the ghost. We keep this one. They all have really beautiful covers. 

Diane Hullet: They do. 

Mia Hope Adgate: The last one you’ve reached, Sam, is what it called. I don’t know if I said the name. 

Diane Hullet: Yes. 

Mia Hope Adgate: It had a really pretty cover too, but I throw it away. 

Diane Hullet: Uhhuh, the, was it ghosts or ghost? The ghosts. We keep the ghosts, we keep.

Yeah. And listeners, I will have all these written down somewhere in my kinda show notes, so we’ll you can follow them there. 

Mia Hope Adgate: This book is about, I think a 16-year-old whose brother died and the 16-year-old is, it’s a really horrifying death that he went through. He’s [00:15:00] dealing with the grief and the loss of his older brother, and it was hard because he had a fight with his older brother before.

And so just like in the last one you’ve reached Sam, he just wishes he could go back and have one more conversation. Oh yeah. In this book, he deals with the grief of everyone around him. Well, trying to manage his own grief. So he has to kind of juggle the grief that his parents are holding and that his brother’s best friend was holding all while trying to keep on to his sense of self and feeling his grief.

It’s a, it’s a beautiful book as well, which 

Diane Hullet: I think what you just said is a mouthful. And that’s very real, right? That grief happens in systems, in family systems and friend systems. And I think it’s especially, that’s so well put because it’s especially intense, I think, for siblings. When a sibling dies, there is their own grief, but then there’s the grief of the parents and it, it’s just this [00:16:00] complicated family web that it, you know.

Really take some support to kind of get through and tease out. 

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah. In this book, he was kind of like, his older brother was kinda like the perfect child, and so he was kind of a little more thrown out to the side. So he had harbored some resentment towards his older brother, and when his brother died, he felt horrible about holding that resentment towards him, and he just wondered what he could have done in the past to make it just any better.

Ah, so there was al already some internal resentment with himself, also with that grief that of his brother’s death. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. And again, really realistic, right? I mean, you’ve got some siblings, right? So yeah. It just is a reminder. Yeah. Do we, do we wanna hold onto that and end up angry, and then when somebody dies, there’s so much regret and complexity.

Well, these tell, tell me, tell us again what grade you’re in. I’m in ninth [00:17:00] grade. I’m 15, ninth grade, so just coming to the end of ninth grade. And you know why. In your experience, why does it matter to read books like this? Like how has it changed you? 

Mia Hope Adgate: Well, I’ve always been pretty connected with the grief world, but to those who aren’t, I think reading about grief is a really great insight to seeing and.

Understanding the death world better, especially with teens, I think we can be kind of indifferent or try not to think about anything grief or death related because it scares us a little more. And especially nowadays, I find that a lot of teens are kind of scared of death in total and all. And I think that if we read more books and made death less of a scary thing to fear, it would really benefit our community.

Diane Hullet: Yeah, it’s interesting. I, I find teens are, are it the people that I chat with or come across, it’s like this weird thing of like, keep [00:18:00] it at arm’s length and also be obsessed about it. So, you know, movies or TV shows, things like the forensic files, like people are obsessed with these kind of weird murder, dark death things, but then they don’t wanna go to a funeral of a, you know, family friend who died.

So there’s this weird discrepancy I find with, with, I don’t know, almost romanticizing it in a weird way or the violence of it. Also, y’all have grown up with a, a real reality that’s different than I grew up with this whole kind of active shooter drills in elementary school. I mean, that is simply a reality of feeling like death is random and can come at any time that I know my daughters have, that I, I didn’t grow up with.

So it’s a different relationship to death too. This, in this era. 

Mia Hope Adgate: And that’s what makes it even more scary because with these shooter drills that we do, and with these, all these things that we’re trying to prevent, it does feel like death can hit us at every instant. Like we could turn a [00:19:00] corner and we could die.

Especially in school. Yeah. Which is terrifying. 

Diane Hullet: It’s terrifying. It’s so intense. My, one of my daughters said to me, you know, I assume I’ll be in an active shooting situation in my lifetime. And I was like, really? Like, I assume that won’t happen, but this is her reality. 

Mia Hope Adgate: It is. And back to what you said before about romanticizing death, I do think we get a lot of that more is now, like for instance, I’ve heard a lot more about, especially women listening and reading these like true crime murder shows.

And, and I think that and I think all of these, these murder shows and the romanticism of death is kind of negatively affecting our view on death. Because all we hear about death isn’t the beautiful side of it or the peaceful side of it, or anything other than just the harsh, violent, and also slightly fascinating to our mind side of it.

Diane Hullet: Right? And also the ones you’re talking about, kind of [00:20:00] misogynistic, right? So, so violence against women and kind of that. Real dark side of humanity, which is very different than the six books you’ve shared. I, I was thinking when, when we were, you know, heading towards this podcast this morning, I woke up thinking about one of the real gifts I feel like my parents gave me, and I feel like yours are the same, is that they never.

They never said I couldn’t read anything. Like I read everything as a kid and I read probably books that were way over my head and totally inappropriate. There wasn’t as much good young adult fiction when I was in, you know, this is like the late seventies, and so I just read adult books and I learned so much from those, you know, rich experiences of.

Real current big major books, and I love that. Now there’s this whole huge genre of young adult books that explores these huge themes. I mean, these, the, the six books you’ve said just sound absolutely beautiful in terms of exploring what it is to be human, which I think is what books can [00:21:00] give us. 

Mia Hope Adgate: And not only what it means to be human.

I think that also reading these books can make us feel connected in a way that we didn’t before. Like we’re not the only one who’s feeling it. It can make us feel a lot less alone. 

Diane Hullet: Yes, totally. And I think there’s something about like I, I say to people, I. You know, books are a book about death, or about grief, or about loss, is just, it’s just a good entry point for a conversation.

Like read one book and then talk about it to somebody, and there you’ve explored death, you know? So to be able to do that at 14, 15, 16 is just really tremendous. 

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah. I think that it really, sometimes we can hold in our hearts or lock up. Like feelings of grief because we don’t hear anybody else say about anything about it.

So when we read these books, it gives us permission to speak out loud the things that we’re feeling and not just keep it tied up and locked up. 

Diane Hullet: Mm, [00:22:00] yeah. You just said a mouthful and so important. Right? So important. I mean, we see how when we lock down those feelings, it, it doesn’t help the individual. It doesn’t help the family system doesn’t help friendships.

You know, it doesn’t 

Mia Hope Adgate: help anything. 

Diane Hullet: It doesn’t help anything. It just really brings isolation. But I, I can also imagine, I mean, as a young person, when you have a, a devastating loss, you know, if you have, if you’re 15 and your grandparent dies, everybody sort of expects it. But if there’s something more. I don’t know.

More out of order. Almost, I wanna say like a friend or a younger sibling or a, a parent who’s, you know, in their thirties or forties, you just, you do you feel like such an odd oddball, you know, like nobody is a, this has never happened to anybody before. I, I. Can only imagine what it’s like to be a young person with a huge loss, and then to find other people who can resonate with that is really something.

So I think, you know, this is where grief groups come in because [00:23:00] you’ve simply gotta find people who understand what you are going through. I. 

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah, especially nowadays with, there have been more increases in teen suicides, so reading books about the grief of suicides of like a close friend or anything that can help make you feel a lot less alone.

Diane Hullet: Yeah. I’m so glad you bring that up because I do, I think suicide for people under the age of 25 is, is just enormous. And so how that reverberates through a community and what do you sort of. Put in place ahead of time to understand it. And I don’t know, maybe it’s not understandable comprehend, but to, to be able to be with it and keep living through it is really a thing.

Mia Hope Adgate: And I think what you just said right there is just to be with it is really the biggest impact. Not to have to do anything with it, just to be able to sit with it. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. And again, reading books before you need the books, like to [00:24:00] prepare the way it’s somehow, it’s like it’s preparing the soil so that you can have these real life experiences planted in them and not feel so alone and so strange.

I, maybe I’m just making this up, but I, I feel like a big thing about being sort of ages, I don’t know, 10 to 18, is you just feel so. Strange. You know, you just feel like nobody ever gets me, ever, ever, and my experience is weird, and this is all just abnormal when in fact it’s all normal. 

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah, and reading books, just not even death and grief books, but just books in general can really make you feel a lot less strange because there are some stranger people out in those books, 

Diane Hullet: I would say.

So in Stranger Societies, I mean some of these books you’ve mentioned, the kind of the fantasy world, take us really different places. Do you are you an aspiring writer? Do you write stories? 

Mia Hope Adgate: Poems. Mm-hmm. Short stories. I don’t know about aspiring writer. I love to write, but I don’t think I could write a whole book.

Diane Hullet: I know, I know. It’s kind of [00:25:00] overwhelming, but you love to read them. I do. I love to read them. And it sounds like you’re a person who collects your books and keeps them on a shelf, and occasionally you pass one on or toss it. 

Mia Hope Adgate: I reread all of my books. 

Diane Hullet: Oh, interesting. All of them. One of my daughters has, I think she’s on her fifth time around of her favorite book.

Yeah, 

Mia Hope Adgate: yeah. I have read the Harry Potter series more than 10 times. 

Diane Hullet: I love it. I love it. I love it. So you’re a person who just packs books and takes them everywhere with you. 

Mia Hope Adgate: I do love to get my hands on new books, and I think sometimes even if I don’t wanna read the new books, I actually do end up loving them.

My mom goes to the libraries and picks out all these books. I’m like, I don’t wanna read this mom. Yeah, I don’t need a new, gonna read all my old favorites. 

Diane Hullet: But then I’ll find a new favorite. Yes. She’ll be like I told you. I love that. That’s really funny because there is something about the comfort of those familiar words and the phrases and the things you’ve annotated and the characters, you know.[00:26:00] 

But there is also something about trying some new ones. Yeah. Well, Mia, hope I’m so thrilled. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and chatting with us about these books. And I, I hope you know that listeners take in both, you know, here’s six titles that are interesting maybe for your grandchildren or your children or yourself.

And also just this idea of how books are such a powerful. Ah, preparation and companion in the path of being a human. They’re all stated as broadly as possible, right? 

Mia Hope Adgate: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on this podcast. It was, it was really fun. I mean, it’s. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah, it’s really fun. We were talking about, this is Mia Hope’s first podcast.

I don’t know, listeners, I think she should be on more. What do you think? Thank you. Well, thanks so much. You’ve been listening to the Best Life Best Death podcast, and as always, you can find out more about the work I do at Best Life. Best stuff.com. Thanks for listening.