Book: This is Where It Ends Author: Marieke Nijkamp
Published: 2016
Source: Local Library
Summary: On a chilly winter morning in Opportunity, Alabama, every student in the high school shuffles into the auditorium for yet another semester-opening assembly, complete with the same speech they've been hearing every year. It goes about like usual, until everyone gets up to leave, and finds every door locked. They're trapped.
And then the shooting begins.
First Impressions: This was so hard to read. I liked the multiplicity of views on the shooter from different viewpoints, and the mirroring of the sibling relationships.
Later On: Truthfully? I really didn't want to read this book, and I wouldn't have if I hadn't been judging it for the Cybils. Not because I thought it was going to be bad. I'd been hearing good things about it. But the topic was enough to make me go NOPE, so I went
I couldn't put it down, but at the same time, I didn't want to be reading it. Does that make sense? I hated what the characters were going through (and I guess that's an endorsement in its own way, that the characters were well-drawn enough around all the bloodshed that I cared about every one of the many, many kids we were introduced to), but at the same time, I wanted to be with them as they did.
My favorite part was the way it took a hard look at the shooter from various perspectives - as a brother, as a boyfriend, as a bully. The other thing I appreciated is that everyone in this book has their challenges and hardships, but still, Tyler is the only one who chose to pick up a gun. There were some glitches in logic, but I was able to overlook that. More seriously, there was a revelation toward the end that felt too late to really have the desired effect.
I don't regret reading it, but at the same time I can't really say that I'm glad I did. It was a harrowing experience, but if that's what you want from your reading, then go for it.
More: Kirkus
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