Hello Bookworms, this is another book review that I pulled out from the deep dark depths of my drafts! In the next couple of weeks, I will be posting all the reviews that had been in my drafts so that I can focus on reviewing new books, and doing some book tags!
Genre: Thriller, Contemporary, LGBT, Young Adult.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐(3/5 stars)
Publisher: Published January 5th 2016 by Sourcebooks Fire
Length: Hardcover, 286 pages
Summary: Everyone has a reason to fear the boy with the gun… 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. In 54 minutes, four students must confront their greatest hopes, and darkest fears, as they come face-to-face with the boy with the gun. (Goodreads)
Recommendation: This book was so gripping, intense and dark that you already know I enjoyed it. Although it wasn’t my first book about a school shooting, I admired the way Marieke Nijkamp was able to transfer the characters’ emotions through the page. As a reader, I love losing myself in a book, and at times I could even feel my heart pounding as if I was one of the characters. Regrettably, there were some downsides to this book that made me rate it 3 stars out of 5. The main disappointment was the multiple POV’s, and the sheer amount of characters that were quite frankly confusing, and hard to keep up with. I love reading about character relationships and growth, but This Is Where It Ends spent too much time on irrelevant details, rather than on the main plot. Towards the end of the novel, I found that I hadn’t become particularly attached to any of them. Moreover, the overall execution of the plot and especially the ending was a little shaky and left me a little unsure about what I had just read. Then again, don’t get me wrong, I do believe this to be an important read and would recommend this novel to the ages of 13-17.
A little about the author: Marieke Nijkamp a storyteller, dreamer, globe-trotter, geek. She’s the author of THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS and the forthcoming BEFORE I LET GO (Goodreads)
Praise for This Is Where It Ends
“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
“Marieke Nijkamp’s brutal, powerful fictional account of a school shooting is important in its timeliness.” —Bustle.com
-Thanks for reading!
Reading On A Star 
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