285 pages
Genre: Young Adult/Contemporary
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Source: I received this book as a gift for my birthday!
Purchase: Barnes & Noble | Amazon | The Book Depository
My Rating:
Goodreads Summary: 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
This is Where it Ends made me tremble with a million different feelings. The synopsis did prepare me for an intense read, but I still don't think I was ready.
This is going to be a tough book to write about. School shootings are terrible tragedies that occur way too often. I really wish some kids were not so afraid to speak up about others and about themselves if they are having a tough time, but I know it is more complex than that. Mental illness is not properly addressed in our society and people should not feel ashamed to ask for help, but that isn't always the case. I don't want to go on a long rant about this so now so I shall just focus on the book.
This Is Where It Ends will stay with me for a quite a while. We get 54 harrowing minutes of a school shooting told from four different perspectives. Each teen has a close connection to the shooter, and each point of view will break your heart. One minute these kids' lives were all about just worrying about school and college until disaster struck. I could feel the tension of the kids stuck in the auditorium with the shooter, and with the ones forced to be outside and feeling helpless to help their friends and family.
This book is well written and the characters are real. You have to be in a certain frame of mind to read this one. It will make you cry.
