Review: This is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp
This Is Where It Ends
292 Pages
Release Date: January 5th, 2016
Publisher/Imprint: Sourcebooks Fire
Genre: Teen/YA, YA Contemporary
Everyone has a reason to fear the boy with the gun…
10:00 a.m.
The principal of Opportunity, Alabama’s high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.
10:02 a.m.
The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.
10:03
The auditorium doors won’t open.
10:05
Someone starts shooting.
Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student’s calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.
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*ARC provided by Publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review*
This is Where it Ends is one of those books that makes you think and yet you can’t quite put your thoughts into words. It’s a well-written and extremely troubling book. I thought I would find the four points of view utilized off-putting, leaving me unable to connect with any one character, but I feel like they gave the story and the characters inside of it much more depth and range by using a wider student perspective. Each student had different attitudes, goals, thoughts, and fears, but all of them were linked to the same troubled teen, giving this story an overall cohesive look into a heartbreaking, unbelievably cruel and tragic act of school-related violence.
This is a nightmare situation, truly horrifying, because it does affect us all. This book broke my heart and brought me to tears, over and over again. It’s devastating, and it left me at a true loss on what the answer is to fix this kind of madness. This is a book that needs to be read, because do so with great care. It is not for the faint of heart and it will tremendously affect you.
Reviewer’s addendum: To give this book any rating feels wrong because it is much more than numbers on a scale. Read it. Take it to heart. Because only by bringing these horrifying issues to light can we all take a stand and figure out a way to stop the violence in our schools.
Marieke Nijkamp is a storyteller, dreamer, globe-trotter, geek. She holds degrees in philosophy, history, and medieval studies, and is an executive member of We Need Diverse Books, the founder of DiversifYA, and a founding contributor to YA Misfits.
