At the End of Everything
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Is Where It Ends comes another heartbreaking, emotional and timely page-turner that will keep you on the edge of your seat. The Hope Juvenile Treatment Center is ironically named. No one has hope for the delinquent teenagers who have been exiled there; the world barely acknowledges that they exist. Then the guards at Hope start acting strange. And one day...they don't show up. But when the teens band together to make a break from the facility, they encounter soldiers outside the gates. There's a rapidly spreading infectious disease outside, and no one can leave their houses or travel without a permit. Which means that they're stuck at Hope. And this time, no one is watching out for them at all. As supplies quickly dwindle and a deadly plague tears through their ranks, the group has to decide whom among them they can trust and figure out how they can survive in a world that has never wanted them in the first place. Also by Marieke Nijkamp: This Is Where It Ends Even If We Break Before I Let Go Praise for Marieke Nijkamp: "Immersive and captivating. Thrilling in every sense of the word."—Karen M. McManus, #1 New York Times bestselling author of One of Us is Lying on Even If We Break "With exceptional handling of everything from mental illness to guilt and a riveting, magic realist narrative, this well wrought, haunting novel will stick with readers long after the final page."—Booklist on Before I Let Go *STARRED REVIEW* "A compelling, brutal story of an unfortunately all-too familiar situation: a school shooting. Nijkamp portrays the events thoughtfully, recounting fifty-four intense minutes of bravery, love, and loss."—BookRiot on This Is Where It Ends
Reviews with the most likes.
The Hope Juvenile Detention Center is a place where troubled teens are sent after all other options are seemingly spent. It's not a very hopeful place and troubled or not these kids deserve better. Just like many places like this, there are cliques and certain people who rule over others especially when the guards aren't looking (some of who aren't any better than the bullies). What if one day the guards stop coming around? What if you find out there is a plague going on in the outside world and maybe you and your new found group of friends are left to basically fend for themselves because who is going to come for kids that everyone already gave up on?
What I liked the most was the character development. You have different types of kids banding together to survive in a world that doesn't want them to the point that they just locked them away somewhere. Which made for a very heartbreaking but hopeful story.
1.5 stars*
This book could have been great, but it feels rushed and messy in its execution. If another year or even a few more months were taken to tighten the plot, adequately develop the characters, and enhance the flow, I think this book could've had potential, but I am too caught up in the messiness to be able to rate it any higher than 1.5 (.5 for potential).
At the End of Everything, Marieke Nijkamp
Apocalyptic fiction, young adult
400 pages, published January 25th, 2022
I love love LOVED “Even if We Break” by Marieke Nijkamp so I was VERY excited to receive AT THE END OF EVERYTHING from NetGalley at no cost which thus resulted in this review. I downloaded this the instant I got it, read a few chapters, took a break to have dinner and hang out with my roommates, and then it was 3am and I was finishing it. It follows the pattern of one of my other favorite books, LIFE AS WE KNEW IT by Susan Beth Pfeffer, where a huge event happens (in that book, when an asteroid hits the moon and the tides change completely) and it changes everything, and the government isn't doing anything so it's up to the characters to continue to figure out how to live. It's basically LIFE AS WE KNEW IT smash cut with THE SOCIETY, but it takes place at a juvenile detention center, and the huge event that happens is a pandemic that's much worse than the one we are currently living through. The feeling of dread that surrounds the entire book reminds me of WILDER GIRLS, which is also about girls surviving in a remote location while terrible things happen.
This story is told through first-person narration of three main characters interspersed with phone conversation transcripts. It's extremely effective and evocative, especially as more of the characters and residents of the facility succumb to the pandemic. I loved all three of the main characters in this book: Grace, a headstrong girl who just wants a future, Emerson, a nonbinary teen who plays violin, and Logan, who is a nonverbal autistic character, something that I have literally never seen in a book.
Was it rough reading this book during a pandemic, as cases are getting worse and worse? Yeah, a little. But it's worth it. This ranks as one of my favorite books this year. Five stars.
