This Is Where It Ends - Marieke Nijkamp (Review)

This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp
Genres: Young Adult Fiction
Publication date: January 5th 2016
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Format: hardcover,
How I got it: My public Library
Buy it: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
My rating: 4/5 

10:00 a.m. The principal of Opportunity 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 a.m. The auditorium doors won't open.

10:05 a.m. Someone starts shooting.

Told from four different perspectives over the span of fifty-four harrowing minutes, terror reigns as one student’s calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

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My thoughts:

I had read a lot of reviews about this book before I read it.  I struggle with books that deal with very tough topics that aren’t handled well.  I wanted a lot from this book since I read so many powerful thoughts on it.

This book met all my expectations.   The author took a very hard topic of a school shooting and handled it very well.  We get to consider four major characters POV and how they got into the school that day as well as how they know the shooter.  Each of the characters has their own perspective of how they got to the situation they are in on this day and how to survive what is going on.

For some reason this book didn’t come across as very emotional to me I was never overwhelmed and felt like I needed to sit in a corner and cry (which is kind of how I thought this was going to go).  I felt like the author was hitting us more with past thoughts and giving us a play by play without getting drowned with too many emotions going on.  The characters involved where giving us their thoughts, but they were digging into the past to figure out how we got to where they are now.   The author does a great job almost creating a story within a story.  We get a solid look at the past, which lead everyone to where they are today.  I also think the author didn’t go into too much vivid details, which I personally liked about this book.  It wasn’t so much about what was going on exactly, but more about each character.

The author also took some other difficult topics of loss of a loved one and added this into this book without missing a beat.  We also get a look at one character helping a person who is losing their memory, which to me is one of the hardest things to experience. The backgrounds that the author gave each student was so diverse and added to the reading of this book.  I just wanted everyone to make it out safely and while reading I didn’t know if that was going to happen or how the story was going to unfold.

I guess my one complaint would have been I would have loved more in the ending.   Going back to a point I made before the book wasn’t overly emotional in my mind, so many the ending was the best way to tie it up without everyone losing it.   I do wish I got more of what happened to each character in the after I could even see a whole book being about the after effects of this shooting.

I would suggest this as a weekend read.  I needed a lot of time to process this book.  It was a fast read and kept my attention the entire time.   The author does a great job keeping the story flowing so that the time in the book and the time you are reading sort of flies by. 

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About the Author

Marieke Nijkamp a storyteller, dreamer, globe-trotter, and diversity advocate. She holds degrees in philosophy, history, and medieval studies. 

Her debut YA novel THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS will be out from Sourcebooks Fire in 2016.

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