This Is Where It Ends

It was always going to be difficult to find a book to follow Harry Potter & the Cursed Child, I wanted something that would have a strong story that would be engaging and yet also not an overly long ‘epic' marathon of a book. It needed to match up to the pace of the Potter play. I spotted This Is Where It Ends in a bookshop recently and reading the blurb on the back it immediately pulled in my attention.

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.

I have very recently read another book about a school shooting, Steena Holmes' ‘Stillwater Rising' which I gave a moderate review to as it didn't live up to the standard of Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes, the book I've always felt made me think most deeply about such horrific events as these books seek to portray. I was keen to see how Marieke Nijkamp approached the subject matter.

Firstly this book isn't written for the adult audience but instead is aimed at a Young Adult and teen age group and where Holme's was focused upon the effects of school shootings on the adults left behind Nijkamp takes us into the heart of the event itself, inside the school through the eyes of four of the people involved as the shooting takes place. We see events through the eyes of people within the auditorium with the shooter including his sister and also two teens within the school grounds but away from the actual events as they desperately try to do what they can to help their friends and family inside the auditorium.

It is non stop action throughout, the chapters are short and snappy and within each chapter Nijkamp switches to different perspectives of different characters as they all recount their actions, emotions and observations of the events of the shooting that unfold that day. As a result it was very difficult to put this book down. You just want to know what is going to happen next, we have flashbacks interspersed into characters observations that help to flesh out the reasons why perhaps the shooter may be carrying out such a callous execution of his friends, classmates and teachers. I found it hard to stop reading, and although this isn't a hugely long book at less than 200 pages it felt like I was flying through it.

I've seen various reviews of this book, some of the more negative reviews I've seen have criticised the book for not taking time to explore the mind and reasoning of the shooter Ty, we are never granted any dialogue from his perspective. Instead he is always a third party character, observed by the other's in the book. Never do we get to break down properly what could have motivated him. Instead the reasons are reduced to him being abused by his father and the loss of his mother in a car accident. Some people have said this angered them and meant they were upset by this simplified approach. I can see their perspective and agree I would have liked even as part of the epilogue to have had a chapter from Ty's voice, talking about the message he intended to leave people as a result of the shooting, a letter found retrospectively or anything to have given this book a more rounded perspective. That is the reason why I've given only 4 and not 5 stars to this book.

It sits quite well within it's Young Adult genre and as an adult I loved it and didn't find it sugar coated the events however as a parent I'd be wary of allowing children too young to read it.

I enjoyed this book significantly more than Holmes' interpretation of the difficult subject of school shootings but on reflection I'd still say that Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult was the one that really allowed us to view the subject from all angles and left me unsettled for days after by the uncomfortable moral questions she raised about bullying, teen cliques and parenting. She covered it all. Nijkamp has done an amazing job of looking at the fear, drama and immediate responses during a shooting and it would definitely be a book I'd recommend to others as a strong book to read if you enjoyed Nineteen Minutes.