Slightly torn on this one ... as a teacher, I found myself thinking, "That's not what we're told to do in this situation. That's not how things would play out in my school, or even in real life." But if you can suspend your disbelief and just go with the story, it's a fast-paced read. Interesting characters, good action ... just don't think about it too much :)

As the winter semester begins at Opportunity High School, most of the student body is assembled in the auditorium for the principle's welcome back message. There are a few exceptions to this from the track team preparing to defend their state title winning streak and the two guys trying to break into the principle's office to get a look at their permanent records.

A few minutes after ten, the doors to the auditorium are bolted shut and the first shots ring out. Former student Tyler has something to say and he's going to say it to everyone gathered at the business end of several guns and multiple rounds of ammo.

For the next hour, This Is Where It Ends puts readers in and around Opportunity High School, watching events unfold through the eyes of multiple narrators who all ask the same question, "How did this happen here?" As the story unfolds, we find out just what drove Tyler to plan and carry out the attack on his classmates, teachers, and administration as well as feeling the desperation of those in and around the school as they struggle to survive Tyler's attack.

The opening pages of This Is Where It Ends channel the confusion and terror of a high school shooting incident. But it's once Tyler settles in and begins to demand that the student body listen to him now that the novel slowly begins to lose its focus. As the possible step stones to this event are slowly uncovered, Tyler more like a comic book villain while the characters around him spend a lot of time wondering if they could have contributed to or stopped this attack somehow. Included in the narration are Tyler's ex-girlfriend, his sister and the girl he sexually assaulted on prom night. And while these characters offer different insights into who Tyler who then and is now, it never quite gels into something more. There's also a great deal of teenage angst thrown in along the way that feels a bit out of place at times in the story that's unfolding.

The novel also isn't helped because it feels like it's working too hard to make the adults appear as useless and ineffectual as possible. As the shootings begin, the track team is outside training for the upcoming season. The track coach is less effective at finding a way to address the situation and calm the fears of his team than one of his students (who happens to be Ty's ex-girlfriend and is a member of the ROTC). I'm not asking that the adults be superheroes that can somehow magically stop the rampage that Ty goes on, but it would be nice to feel as if one or two of them was somehow portrayed as having a bit more sense.

Teens won't be able to put down this story of a school shooting. The book is well crafted and, for the most part, believable.

I ended up not being able to download this book, so I bought it in hardcover instead. This book focused on a topic that is kind of taboo in YA literature. I believe it did the topic justice, it is just not my favourite book from this genre. :)

This Is Where It Ends is, quite simply, about a mass school shooting that happens on the first day of the new semester, a day that begins just like every new semester begins. There is an assembly with most of the school present, where Principal Trenton is giving her usual speech to students who basically aren't listening. It is only when the students try to leave the auditorium and discover they can't open the doors that this ordinary school day takes a tragic turn.

Opportunity High School is located in a remote part of the town by the same name, reached by one two-lane road, and surrounded by a forest and some fields. The grounds are patrolled by one security guard name Jonah. Near the school building is a track where students Claire Morgan and her friend Chris are practicing on this particular morning. Two other students, Tomás Morales and his friend Fareed have just broken into Principal Trenton's office to look at another student's file when they hear footsteps approaching the office door, then leaving. Tomás' twin sister Sylv Morales and her girlfriend Autumn Browne are about to leave the auditorium when they see Autumn's brother Tyler standing in the shadow by one of the exits. As the word 'gun' floats towards them, the first shot is fired directly at Principal Trenton. Opportunity High School is under siege by a well-armed Tyler.

The story, which covers only 54 minutes, is told from four different points of view - Claire, Autumn, Sylv, and Tomás. Each one has had a relationship with Tyler and each has a reason to fear him now, including his sister. Their past relationships with Tyler are recounted in flashbacks that reveal a young man on a downward spiral after the sudden death of his mother, resulting in anger, verbal cruelty, betrayal and physical abuse. These four narrators also provide an intimate narrative of what was going on both inside and outside the auditorium and why the police didn't respond sooner, including why no cell phones were used to call them as is usual in school shootings these days.

This Is Where It Ends must surely have been a difficult kind of book to write, and on the whole, I thought it was done well. You can't pigeon-hole the type of person who commits this kind of terrible act, nor how the victims of a school shooting will react. And I think Marieke Nijkamp did a great job capturing the fear the students felt, the carnage that these shooting result in and the shooter's motivation.

I know a lot of people were disappointed by the book, especially because Nijkamp is a founding member of the We Need Diverse Book movement. Schools all over the country are more diverse than they were years ago, and the characters in this novel do reflect that diversity. Autimn and Sylv are a leabian couple, Tomás and Sylv are Hispanic, and Fareed is an Afghan Muslim. Some readers seem to think that Fareed was a surface character, merely there as a token for the sake of diversity. I felt that after the shooting began, he was the one who kept the most level head, and I thought that perhaps his rationality came from his experience living in war-torn Afghanistan before moving to the US. But that is just speculation on my part.

This was a difficult book for me to read, which is why it took me a year to read after getting the book from NetGalley. We suffered a great loss in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting when my cousin's 7 year old son was killed there. I really believe that as school and other mass shootings become more frequent, the need to understand and talk about them becomes greater. Book like This Is Where It Ends will hopefully go far in helping to start those difficult conversations.

This book is recommended for readers age 13+
This book was an EARC received from NetGalley

If you would like to find out more about about some of the things that can be done to prevent school shootings, be sure to visit Sandy Hook Promise.

Once I finished reading This Is Where It Ends, I thought,  Man. I'm still collecting my thoughts on this one. So much so that I don't know how I want to rate it. o.o

And it was true. I had no idea how to rate it, so I took a few days to think about it. There were things I liked about it, but they weren't enough to leave me raving. Instead, the book ended up being lackluster for me.

This Is Where It Ends is told from multiple characters' POV, and you end up finding out the ways they're connected besides simply going to the same school, which I really liked. I also appreciated the diverse cast of characters. It was refreshing to read about people different from me. For instance, one of the characters has lupus, and I researched it because I couldn't remember exactly what it is. I ended up learning quite a bit from my searches, and that likely wouldn't have happened without this book. 

There were times when the story lagged. One of the character's POV was the least interesting to me because she was outside of the action, plus I wasn't able to connect with any of the characters. The backstory of the shooter and the shooter's motivation were too pat, too cut and dry. That to me was completely unrealistic. While most of us can't fathom what would drive someone to shoot people, the reasons are messy and complicated.

I can't completely recommend This Is Where It Ends. My reasons for liking some of it while not liking other parts may be what you want from a book. Or it may not be. But if you're looking for emotional depth, then this isn't a book where you'll find that unfortunately.

Really disappointing and just not my thing. Thank you for the review copy though.