November 16, 2015

This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp 4/5 stars

Hey, guys!  I just finished This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp today.  I had some mixed feeling about it in the beginning but ended up really enjoying it.  If you love suspense, this is a great book!  (Warning: It can be violent at times.)
The Cover:
The Cover:
I really like this cover.  It shows pieces of chalk being obliterated by a bullet with the title written in chalk.  I like it.  The subheader, in case you can't read it, says, "Everyone has a reason to fear the boy with the gun."  A+ cover

Official Description:
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.


My Review:
First, I need to talk about this books formatting.  It's told from the alternating first-person perspectives of four students at Opportunity High on the day of a school shooting.  Each POV only lasts for about a page and a half, and each chapter is a set of all the characters' POV over the course of about two minutes of story-time.  This makes it very confusing to keep track of the characters for the first few chapters, but them adds to the suspense and keeps the tension up as the story progresses.  After most chapters will be texts or tweets that are being exchanged between minor characters of the story.  I understand Nijkamp's choice but wish it had been written in third person instead of first person.  
Each of the characters have a unique relationship with the shooter, which gives a neat perspective on all of the events.  The characters were interesting, though I feel like their life-stories were a bit forced and added some unnecessary expositional pages to the book.  That being said, I loved the interactions between the characters.  It was a great decision to compare Sylv and her brother to Autumn and hers. 
The plot was great.  It somehow managed to stay suspenseful constantly.  It can get extremely intense at times.
Overall, I would recommend it if you can handle violence/suspense and remember that it gets better once you understand who the characters are. 

I just checked and This Is Where It Ends doesn't come out until January 5, 2016.  
(I got it a while ago from the folks at Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.)

If you liked this book, you may also like:
Rage by Stephen King
Misery by Stephen King
The Long Walk by Stephen King
(or really any Stephen King book)

Happy Reading!

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