A Review: This is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

Synopsis:
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 from four perspectives over the span of 54 harrowing minutes, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.



Thoughts:
I've waited a little while before reviewing this, and I'm still not entirely sure what I think about this book.  Obviously it's a book about very serious subject matter and I think that stories like these are extremely important for everyone to read.  And I think the author captured the horror of the situation and the fear of being in the midst of it extremely well.

However, I did feel that something was seriously lacking from the novel.  The story was told from the perspective of four different characters that were extremely difficult to tell apart.  Multiple times I had to go back to the beginning of the chapter to check who was narrating it because I forgot which one it was.  In addition to this, the characters all seemed very one-dimensional.  People in real life are complex while the ones in this book were . . . not.  To me, this was a particular problem when it came to the shooter.  In comparison to another book that I recently read (Hate List by Jennifer Brown) the shooter lacked complexity and a backstory that would make them a (slightly) more sympathetic character.  The shooter in this book seemed to be attacking simply because they were "evil" which does not make for an interesting character.

I think the main reason for the issues with the characters was that there was simply no time in the book to allow for character development.  The entire story took place in less than an hour.  And there were very few flashbacks that would have allowed the reader to understand the characters better.  Perhaps if the events of this novel were part of a larger overall story that also dealt with the aftermath of the attack then there would have been a chance for character development (once again, Hate List by Jennifer Brown comes to mind).

Overall I enjoyed the book and think it's an important one to read.  However, I think other books deal with the subject matter in a better way and better show the complexity that often occurs in situations such as these.

Rating: 3/5