I found this book to be utterly heartbreaking while being an amazing portrait of human resiliency. After a plague has taken over, a group of teens who have resided in a residential treatment facility, have to band together to navigate the difficulties that follow. I found that having each character present their own perspective of what was happening, while also providing background information, that helped to explain why they acted in certain ways was brilliant. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys apocalyptic thrillers, but through the voices of teens with heartbreaking backgrounds. It was such an intimate portrayal of how we as humans, can band together to weather uncertain circumstances.

Thank you to Net Galley for an advanced copy of this book.

At The End of Everything is about an eerily familiar plague, although things get a lot worse in the book than they did in real life. The focus here is on a group of teenagers in a juvenile detention centre who are suddenly left to fend for themselves at the end of the World as we know it, and how they survive.

Everything about the book felt quite slow, despite how quickly everything was falling apart in it. It was quite difficult to engage with since I just wasn't being drawn in. I really wanted to love it, since the premise is brilliant, but I just wasn't hooked.

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Quick Cut: A group of teens at a juvenile center find themselves fending for themselves when a plague outbreak happens across the globe.

A Real Review:
Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for providing the ARC for an honest review.

We have been living in a pandemic for going on two years now. All the problems we used to have changed and now the conversation is more about variants & masks than parties & classes. Can you imagine going through all that without your family or own environment though? This is the case for Emerson and the teens left behind at the Hope Juvenile Treatment Center.

Although its name is so happy sounding, Hope Juvenile Treatment Center is anything but happy. Set in the wilderness of the Ozarks, the landscape of trees and mountain ranges houses a group of teens abandoned by their families and labeled as problematic. The kids here struggle with their problems and identities as is when they notice the adults there acting strangely. Then, soldiers appear to keep them from leaving and find out a plague has broken out. Can they survive on their own? Or will they get sick like everybody else?

Any other time other than during the corona pandemic, this book probably would've gotten a different rating. It's a smart story about surviving in an already difficult situation and learning what you are willing to do to make it to tomorrow. Unfortunately, this book is coming out with a story that rings a little too close to the current reality and just further points out how much the current reality sucks.

This book deals with a lot of difficult topics, like gender identity. We need more honest conversations like this. It needs to be out there that it's okay to struggle with who you are and what you stand for. That struggle is the only way to really figure out what you stand for and how strong you are. I would've just preferred that story to be a little bit more upbeat.

A plague outbreak book that's a little too realistic.

My rating: 3 out of 5

This novel had great underlying messages and was very relevant to the times in which we are currently living. However, I wish I could have found more connection to the characters to really have the message mean something.

I'm obsessed with everything Marieke Nijkamp writes.

At The End of Everything is set in the fictional Hope Juvenile Treatment Center, essentially a detention center for juvenile offenders. The government gets away with calling it a "treatment center" by having one therapist work with literally all the teens there. All the guards are concerned with is getting the teens to follow the rules, however ridiculous they may be.

This book is told through multiple characters' points of view. There's Grace, the girl who somehow got promoted from solitary confinement to leading the teens through a literal plague. There's Emerson, who feels like they just don't belong in this facility. Then there's Leah's nonverbal twin sister, Logan.

While all their story lines coincide, reading Logan's chapters were my favorite. Social cues are a critical necessity when interacting with someone nonverbal, which is why it's absolutely amazing to me that Marieke Nijkamp managed to portray Logan as such a spunky and charismatic character in this book.

Okay, so let's actually get into the plot of the book.

Most of the novel takes place within the confines of Hope Juvenile Treatment Center. Right away, Grace notices something weird is going down but she never expected all of the staff to disappear. The guards, the wardens, the therapists....gone. All these teens have been left alone, but why?

A group of them gather up the courage to leave the facility they've all lived in for months. During their trek for answers, they get stopped at a roadblock. The National Guard informs them of the virus/disease spreading rapidly all over the country. The Guard then gives them the chance to head back to the Hope Facility or be met with gunfire.

Realizing there's no help coming for them, the teens are left to fend for themselves. They have little skills, little food, and little hope of getting out of there alive.

Immense thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for providing me with an advanced copy of this book! At The End of Everything hits shelves on January 25, 2022!

At Hope Juvenile Treatment Centre things are out of the ordinary. The staff is not paying attention and disappears one night. Some of the youth decide to leave Hope to see if they can figure out what is happening, or maybe even escape. When they reach the nearest town, they are however met with armed guards who inform them that there is a deadly worldwide plague and that they must return back to Hope, alone. This is their story of survival.

At the End of Everything is a YA novel that gave me The 100 vibes mixed with In Between (Netflix series), two shows I absolutely loved!

Told in multiple character POV's, which is my favourite, I quickly got absorbed into this book! The chapters are short and I found the pace moved well. I loved the character growth for my main favourites - Logan, Emerson and Grace ❤

Since I love thrillers I would have enjoyed it more if there were more suspenseful situations as it was an pretty calm story, given the situation.

Thank you to Netgalley, Sourcefire Books and Marieke Nijkamp for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A group of teens in a privately run juvenile detention center get abandoned as a plague descends on the world. The group splinters: some deciding to take their chances on the road; some deciding to stay in hopes they can remain safe. This book focuses on those who stayed, and each chapter changes perspectives. Among those perspectives is reluctant leader Grace, who must make difficult decisions everyday to keep the others alive -- and keep them from turning on each other.

The concept of the book is interesting, though, for me, it was too soon to read about a pandemic when we're still in the midst of one. There was a lot that hit a little too close to home. But perhaps that increased my empathy for these characters -- just kids, misunderstood, and now abandoned. Their resilience, instincts, and willingness to make sacrifices for the greater good left me rooting for them.

There were certain parts of the book that felt a little unreal (when they had access to phones and internet, why didn't they post on social media about their plight?), and I wanted to see perspectives from a couple of other characters, especially Casey. I also was curious about the team that left the facility (though there is an update on them later in the book).

This is a dark, angsty book, but contains some nice, quiet moments of hope.

Logan is living at Hope Juvenile Treatment Center. She shares her room with her nearly identical twin Leah. Life is very regimented with guards watching the residents every move. One day the girls awaken to find that they are alone. No one is there to supervise them, cook, or guard. Such a strange occurrence. The girls decide to go to the closest town to see why they are alone. As the girls approach, they see that the town is guarded by soldiers and surrounded by fencing. They are ordered back to the center. A highly contagious disease is sweeping the country. Food supplies are low and the surviving girls wonder whether they can survive or not.

This is a youth survival story. Can girls pull together for survival? Will they be able to trust each other? It is a beautiful story about resilience and the human spirit.. Such a timely story keep you entranced from start to finish. Marieke Nijkamp is a talented author!

First and foremost, thank you to NetGalley for providing a free copy of At the End of Everything in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve just finished reading an ARC of At the End of Everything by Marieke Nijkamp and I absolutely LOVED it. This was a great 5/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me.

One day, the juveniles at the Hope Juvenile Treatment Center, where delinquent teenagers are sent for various reasons, are abandoned and forgotten by those who were supposed to take care of them. A few curious teens break out to get freedom from the center. They are surprised to run into armed soldiers who tell them that an infectious disease, a plague, has broken out and everyone is confined to their houses and they are not allowed to travel without a permit. Stranded at Hope, the teens who decide to remain there are forced to find a way to survive. With their dwindling food sources, limited medical supplies, and with the plague having broken out within the facility, they have to bind together to make it.

There are three main characters and three points of view throughout the book. Each of the three main characters are white. However, the book is full of people of different races and nationalities. There is also a non-binary transgender teenager who was kicked out of their religious parents’ home. Too many authors nowadays are forcing diversity they don’t want into their stories. The problem with this is they write their characters in offensive manners. Nijkamp, however, doesn’t do this. When they describe a character’s skin tone, they do so in such a way that you can tell they aren’t forcing the diversity. For example, a character named Khalil is described as “Dark-brown hair, light-brown skin, laughing brown eyes.” I also love that Nijkamp didn’t try to write about the injustice black teens experience in the justice system. They didn’t want to take away space from a writer of color.

“This is what the plague looks like. It’s not illness, at first. It’s fear. The type of fear that nags at the back of your thoughts, that crawls like a parasite under your skin. It’s like every bruise that brushes against my clothes.” The story itself was slow. Not in a bad way, but in a good one. They took the time to humanize each character, even the worst ones. They make you feel like you truly get to know the characters of this book. Not just the three narrators but the characters who surround them as well. I could write an entire book on how this book made me feel and the profound thoughts I had about life, fear, and COVID while reading it.

It was surreal to read about a plague when we have one of our own going on in real life. The plague in the book was far worse than COVID is but still, it was emotional to read about. I’d say the genre of this book would be YA Dystopian Psychological Thriller.

This book will be published on 4 January 2022 and I can’t recommend it to others enough!

A dark but optimistic look at how life would be like if Covid had hit harder leaving young characters stuck in a juvenile center.

ARC provided by Netgalley for an honest review.
At the End of Everything is about a group of teens at a juvenile detention center that end up cut off from the outside world. The bubonic plague hits the country and the teens must fend for themselves. I enjoyed the premise of the story and the survival and fight the teens had to persevere through the negativity.

Spoilers:


What I didn't like was how the group that left, somehow they all died but one person. The story didn't cut to those members and how they fought for survival. I also didn't like how the book just ends and we're supposed to believe that the survivors in the center lived and nobody else died from the plague. What happens next? Are the kids rescued? Wth was that ending?

I was really unsure of how I would feel about a pandemic based novel, but I really enjoyed this book. It is fast-paced and shows the resilience that young people have (even when they are from all walks of life). It was almost a little *too* relatable at a couple of different spots, but I appreciated the little details throughout, especially the heartbreaking phone call transcripts. Well done!

Where do I start , first thank you Netgally for letting me read.
I loved this book from the very first page. I connected with these kids. It's a story about kids in a juvenile Treatment Center who are forgotten in the wake of a pandemic. This story i wasn't ready for... I felt all of their emotions and I recommend this book to everybody. It was a five-star for me for sure a must read . Especially being in 2021 and living with a pandemic this book hit close to home.
I just don't want to get into it because I want everybody to go into the book not knowing too much about it like I did... you'll be in for a wild ride. I connected with grace the most.

Hope Juvenile Treatment Center is home to teens without hope.

One day, the guards and doctors are gone. The teens have been abandoned by the system that was meant to help them. But what has happened? Why have they been left alone?

In a storyline that is just a bit too close to home, a pandemic has taken over the world and no-one is safe.

As supplies dwindle and the plague finds its way into their remote world, the group have to decide do they stay or do they go? Who can they trust?

This was an intense book to read, made even more so by the current state of our world and the pandemic changing our lives forever. I read this during Melbourne's 6th lockdown due to Covid-19 and it hit me hard.

The teens of Hope Juvenile Treatment Center were already lost, abandoned by society, family and friends - what possible future can they have now when the whole world is seemingly without hope?

Will this make them or break them? Will it bring out the best in a group of teens who are locked away because of their criminal past, or their worst?

Not an easy read, but a valuable one.

Thanks to Netgalley and Sourcebooksfire for the advance readers copy to read and review.

Trapped inside a juvenile detention center when a plague breaks out (not Covid but similar), the chapters are about different characters and how they learn to survive through it,

I read this book as an ARC and this is my review. I believe this book is extremely important in our world today. It deals with the daily handling of issues like trans genders, gender equality and racial equality. It also takes place in a treatment center with non-caring staff. The subject is timely - a pandemic with the population masked and in lockdown. I loved this book also because it was unputdownable - I wanted to read it all night long! I recommend this story to anyone who enjoys a psychological thriller with incredible characters.

Thank you for my early review copy. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I believe this book will be a huge bestseller.

At The End of Everything was a book I was prepared to dislike immensely. The beginning of the book did not endear most of the children of Hope Juvenile Treatment Center to me in anyway. I almost set this book down and walked away…. but I am so glad I didn’t. In an eerily similar to current events story, the plague hits the country and panic ensues. The children from Hope are left to their own devices. Treated like they are disposable, the adults all just walk away. Left to find food and medical supplies, the children learn quickly and through pure ingenuity— they find the will to survive. The children show determination and such character growth that they begin to worm their way into your heart. By the end of the book, you are celebrating their wins and grieving their losses in such a way that the book becomes something you are so glad you didn’t miss. My voluntary, unbiased review is based upon a review copy from NetGalley.

This was an okay Young Adult Dystopia book. I liked the premise of it, where young adults are in the Hope Treatment center and something happens and the adults all leave.
Here is what I wish...I wish that the young adults had more fully developed back stories. We get glimpses, but the book would have been so much richer if the reader knew about why each one of the teenagers were in the treatment facility in the first place.
Second, I wish that we didn't find out what was happening till a third of the way into the book. I wish that we had more nuance then the guards and the warden leaving AND THEN we find out why.
I wish that there was some build up to what was going on outside of Hope Treatment.
Third, I absolutely hated the pronouns for Emerson. Because the reader never got a full picture of his/her background, it was absolutely a drag to read THEY/THEM/THEIR constantly. I could not get a full description of what they looked or why they ended up at Hope.

This book has so much potential. Just a bit MORE was needed to make this a blockbuster hit of the autumn.

At the end of everything is a good book to good here in the middle of Covid. Just like all of Nijkamps books, there is so much you don’t see coming. There were a few characters I did not love, but overall the book was good.