"At the End of Everything," by Marieke Nijkamp is a touching story that revolves around a group of young teens in a detention facility, who are left to survive on their own when The Plague breaks out in the United States.

Told from the viewpoint of a number of the teens, the book leads to questions about hope, trust, worthiness, inequality. sacrifice and forgiveness.

I think this would be an excellent book for High-school English classes, university curricula, and of course book clubs.

Thank you Netgalley and Sourcebooks for the ARC.

This book absolutely gutted me. From the first chapter, I was completely pulled into the struggles of the Hope Treatment Center. Both before they were abandoned, and after. I could visualize each scene in my mind, the descriptions were real and engaging. I plan to read more from Marieke Nijkamp as a result!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for sending me a copy of this book! All opinions are my own!

I loved how fast-paced this book was and the way it keeps you on edge from start to finish. It's slightly hard to read as something that hits a little too close to home with the events of the past few years. That's part of the appeal that drags you in and keeps you from looking away. And then there's the love and hope that comes from this story, and I absolutely adored that part.

This book is a story of found family and what lengths people will go to for those that they love. It's a story of changing lives through hope and acceptance, and the fact that it's done through kids who are seen as useless by the world, it hits even harder. There's so much darkness in the world, and this story gives such hope and light to that.

I also really loved the representation! One of the MCs has autism, is nonverbal, and uses sign language. Her story is one of acceptance and love in a world that is against her from the start.

If you're looking for a compelling read that will keep you wrapped up in the suspense until the end, definitely check this out!

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Sourcebooks Fire in exchange for an honest review.

For some reason I thought this was a zombie book but I was wrong. At the End of Everything is a book about a group of young offenders who get abandoned and forgotten once a deadly plague breaks out. They must fight for their own survival and navigate their new situation, which leads to a lot of drama and unpleasant situations.

If I'd known this was just a plague book and not a zombie book, I honestly wouldn't have requested it. This book hangs uncomfortably in the shadow of the pandemic and that made it a very difficult read. The deadly disease is a cough that kills people, and much of the book is just reading about teenagers slowly dying. There is not much outside of death and interpersonal struggles happening, and even the latter is a little sparse. There are a lot of narrating characters at first, and that made it difficult to get to grips with everyone. I understand that you need a lot of characters because most of them will die in a book like this, but I would have rather met them more slowly and had more time to get to grips with each one. The beginning was hard to get into for this reason.

Having said that, the characters are probably the strongest part of this book. I think the plot could have been more strongly emotion-driven as everything is a little distant, as unpleasant as the events which happen are. This is something I've experienced from this author before with previous books, so I guess it's more of a feature than a bug. I also wish we'd gotten a split narrative as one group goes out to try their luck in the outside world, and I think it would have been more interesting to see what happened to them as well rather than just the sad monotony of the institute.

Overall, I think if you enjoy other works by this author and like the sound of the premise, then you should give this a try. For me, there were too many factors which prevented me from enjoying it. It's a very bleak read and a potentially triggering one, so be aware of that too

Overall Rating: 3/5

I will be honest, I have tried 3 times to get through this and I finally managed it by skim reading it and doing a buddy read. Being an absolute fangirl when it comes to Nijkamps other novels, I feel like this one was just pandering to the 'lets write a novel about COVID over COVID' trend and I am sorry to say I am not here for it.

Maybe its the mood I was in while reading, maybe I just need to attempt to forget the plot and read it again in a few years time.

A great read.the characters were interesting and the story was intriguing. Will look out for more by this author.

A tale as old as a pandemic! These kids have no rules, no help and no chance. Survival is the goal. This was a captivating read with a good pace. The building relationships and peoblem solving are unique to these characters and I was finding myself rooting for them!

The book is everything. An emotional ride that leaves you wanting to know more. You just have to read it.

This book had a ton of intrigue that kept me going! I found the storyline a bit too real at times having just experienced the pandemic but it made the fear of it more real. I was engrossed and wanted to keep reading. It had a ton of great representation of queer characters that we don't see often enough so I really appreciated that as well. I would recommend this as a good read for my students!

"The Hope Juvenile Treatment Center is ironically named. No one has hope for the delinquent teenagers who have been exiled there; the world barely acknowledges that they exist.

Then the guards at Hope start acting strange. And one day…they don't show up. But when the teens band together to make a break from the facility, they encounter soldiers outside the gates. There's a rapidly spreading infectious disease outside, and no one can leave their houses or travel without a permit. Which means that they're stuck at Hope. And this time, no one is watching out for them at all.

As supplies quickly dwindle and a deadly plague tears through their ranks, the group has to decide whom among them they can trust and figure out how they can survive in a world that has never wanted them in the first place."

A devastating look at the forgotten on any given day, but during a pandemic? A gut punch.

Nijkamp excels at writing books that are unlike anything else you've read. They often address the darker issues teens experiences in realistic ways. We're drug into the darkness and trying to figure out any one, in a similar situation, would be able to get out and survive. Nijkamp puts us in the struggle with her characters and At the End of Everything follows much the same trend.

An emotional rollercoaster of a read, At the End of Everything takes a cast of fascinating, unique characters and throws them into complete upheaval with a mysterious (but disturbingly familiar) pandemic gripping the world beyond their walls.
It's a gripping story from start to finish and absolutely impossible to put down. There are all of the elements that make for a great YA adventure (great characters, unexpected situations, humour, conflict) with events happening at a page-turning pace but there's a depth here that's unusual with questions raised about the very nature of people and relationships and what it means to be part of society (or to live outside of it).
It's cleverly written, compelling and thought-provoking. Highly recommended,

Thank you for this arc copy of At The End of Everything. It wasn't; my type of book but others may like it. I did enjoy the cover picture though.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

🦠 I was not a fan of this book and I am going to briefly tell you why.

🦠 While the plague in this book is not called Covid-19, it sure read exactly as if it was Covid-19. I’m not interested in reliving that.

🦠 This book started out well, but then just petered off into nothing for me. I wasn’t invested in a single character. I wasn’t rooting for anyone. I simply wasn’t engaged.

🦠 I kept thinking “Lord of the Flies meets Covid-19” as I was reading this. Angst, power plays, survival, death… I’ve read it before.

🦠 The ending wasn’t satisfactory.

🦠 I think I need to keep away from pandemic- and plague-related books in general. I’m simply not enjoying them at all right now.

Thank you @NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for an eARC of this book, which I have read and reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

DNF. In all honesty, I think I would have enjoyed this book if I’d read it several years ago. Now, it was just a bit too much for me. I think the premise was intriguing and find Nijkamp’s writing to be very well done. Not a lighthearted read, so going on the “to finish someday, maybe” shelf for me.

This book was surprisingly good! I didn't love Nijkamp's This is Where it Ends, but I thought I'd try again with At The End of Everything because I am one of those rare people who wants books about pandemics while in the middle of a pandemic. Though the plague in this book is more aggressive than Covid 19, it was inspired by the Covid 19 pandemic and surrounding events and I was curious about where this story would go.

At The End of Everything is the story of a group of teens left to fend for themselve at a Juvenile Detention facility that is supposed to be focused on rehabilitation rather than incarceration. The guards are coughing, whispering, and acting weird and then they all just...leave. The world is throw into very strict quaratines and the youth in the home are completely abadoned. Several set out on foot to run away, but a solid crew remains, including our three narrators:
Logan. Logan is mute and has a very strong bond with her twin sister, Leah, who is one of the first teens in the facility to get sick with the plague.
Emerson. Emerson is nonbinary and struggling with religious trauma after being kicked out of their home by their parents.
Grace. Grace is headstrong, has anger issues, and becomes the leader of the group.

What I appreciated most about this story was that it allowed the plague to be the real danger and didn't create too many arificial dangers within the group of teens. Sure there were conflicts, but the side effects of the plague were enough of a conflict to keep the story moving without having excess violence. Of course there were conflicts within the group, and tense moments/situations, but the daily struggle for information, food, and a plan take the spotlight in the storytelling. I found this refreshing.

I also really liked the end of the story. It made me cry, and not many books have made me cry this year! Without giving away spoilers, do be aware that this is book where people do die (it is the plague, after all) and everything is not going to be wrapped up in a tidy bow. How could it be? Its based on the Covid 19 pandemic and we're STILL not done with that yet -- we don't know how it ends!

There were a few things that fell flat for me. At the beginning there were too many characters and I got very confused. I struggled getting into the story for that reason. Similarly, the character's voices were all very similar and couldn't keep them straight for about the first half of the novel. I do feel like some of the depth of the story got lost for this reason.

Overall, though, this was a great read and one I highly recommend for anyone who can handle reading about a subject that might hit close to home for many.

I've read Nijkamps other books and they were all good, this one also did not disappoint.

It's definitely a different type of book than I normally read but I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Not even remotely hiding that this is a COVID book, which I have mixed feelings about. It was certainly a different take on it, which I liked, and I did have a vested interest in the outcome for the characters but the writing wasn’t that compelling for me.