This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

The principal of Opportunity, Alabama’s high school finishes up her speech welcoming the students to the new year. But when the principal dismisses the students to class they find that the doors are locked and then the shooting begins.

This is Where it Ends tells the tale of the horror of a school shooting from four different points of view during the horrific events that take place over the course of the next fifty four minutes.

Living in the U.S. this type of event happening is becoming far too common on the news so when I first read the synopsis for this story I was quite intrigued with how it would be written. What I was expecting was the book to be so full of emotion that it would end up being tough to even get through. However, I think what it lacked most was the emotional attachment that I though would be involved. As the POV changes I’d often forget who it was that was telling the story at that time.

Another kind of small nuisance for me in this story was the focus on race, religion, sexual orientation in describing characters that just didn’t seem to fit the situation. This seemed to just halt my attempt at connecting with the characters as human beings in a horrific situation and instead make me think there was a checklist to make sure that the high school was diverse. A bit odd to worry about the color of one’s skin or sexual orientation when facing a gunman.

Overall, 2.5 stars, not the emotional read I was hoping for, characters didn’t seem to be fully developed personality wise, including the shooter, to get my attention and get me invested in the story.