Scythe

This book is about death, mortality, killing, suicide, different methods of dying, and the dreariness of not dying. Make sure you're in the right headspace before picking this up.

Two sixteen year olds are chosen as apprentice Scythes (distributors of death) but there's only one job opening so there's a bit of competition. The pacing of this story is really good. We get to know the central characters pre-apprenticeship, then get to know what life as a Scythe is like for a good while before things go off the rails.

The bad guys are really unsubtle, even for a YA story. It makes one wonder how they rose to power in the first place. The other Scythes are a bit more nuanced, thankfully. The two apprentices have hormones but no romance in this book.