Zooming In ~ This is Where it Ends 12/20/2019

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     Marieke Nijkamp’s debut YA novel, This is Where it Ends, follows 4 students through a traumatic 54 minutes of their lives in which a shooter locks them in the assembly hall. Autumn, the younger sister of the shooter, Tyler, her girlfriend Sylvia, Sylvia’s twin brother Tomás, and Tyler’s ex-girlfriend, Claire all narrate the story, each with short passages at similar times in different situations. Tyler, who has been acting strange and was gone from school for a while, has decided to reappear and finish out his old battles for good. While everyone at Opportunity High is in the auditorium for the beginning of school assembly, everything takes a turn for the worse.

     Most novels span many days sometimes even weeks, months, or years, so this book differs when the entire 300 page novel zooms in on 54 horrific minutes. Each chapter or passage of the book focuses on one or two minutes of the incident, describing in painful detail every movement, action and thought. I think that this serves a certain purpose in how the story is presented, as by zooming in so much, the significance of everything is weighted a lot more. This style can also make readers realize how quickly things can go wrong, how in just a second everything can flip. The book starts out with a perfectly normal day in a school assembly, with everyone expecting to go home in the afternoon, but it only takes a minute for Tyler to show up with a gun.

This book may be a bit frightening for some readers, as it is a heavy topic that can be upsetting, but in some ways, it should be frightening. The author is trying to make a point, by writing about this topic in such a troubling way, as shootings have been so common that they have almost becoming normalized, and we need to be reminded just how horrible they can be and that it can happen to anyone. Although this book is certainly an important read and can be very beneficial especially with discussion afterwards, that does not mean it is immediately a great book. I think that a lot of things are good about this novel, but it does have some short comings. To me, it feels a bit as though the author is rushing to make a point, without actually creating strong writing and characters. One thing that I found slightly annoying was the shear amount of secondary characters. There were many characters that were not main ones, but many seemed thrown in for no reason, and they distracted from the plot. I personally would have preferred fewer but more developed characters than a ton of shallow ones.

     This is Where it Ends is an important young adult novel that deals with school shootings specifically in high schools. While not the most beautifully written book, it is worth reading and can provoke important and meaningful discussions among people. I would recommend this to anyone who feels comfortable reading it. It is probable best for older children and adults as it may be to upsetting to young kids, but its audience is not just limited to teens. Even if the topic is a little challenging, I would still recommend it as it can be good to be challenged as long as you don’t hurt yourself.