I don't even know how to review this book. I just feel like it didn't have enough... enough of what I can't tell you. It was missing something to me.

Tyler feels he has lost everything - well, more like everything has been taken from him. He's angry, lonely, desperate, and feels the only way to make it right is to take his frustration out on the world that has betrayed him - Opportunity High School. His method - a deadly shooting spree - that's how he will not be forgotten.

Caught in the firestorm of Tyler's wrath, this story is told from the perspective of the four people he seeks to destroy - Claire, Autumn, Slyv, and Thomas.

Like: This book is extremely well written from a teenage point of view - not adult thinking, but emotional based and invincible mentality.

Like: It's not political, it's not a social commentary, or philosophically motivated - just telling a story.

Dislike: Culture's misunderstanding of love. Autumn & Sylv's relationship is a perfect best friend relationship, it doesn't need to be physically intimate. Like most teen relationships, it lacks the maturity it needs to really understand the commitment required to make it last.

Dislike: F-word just seems randomly thrown in there and is completely unnecessary when there is very little language in the rest of the book.

This fast paced book about a school shooting takes you through the thoughts and social media of multiple students in a school. This school is in the midst of a school shooting being brought on by an upset student that was kicked out. This book did a great job detailing what goes through the minds of the victimized students. Students portrayed are those that are at the center of the shooting, the ones that are the "cause" for the shooting, as well as students that are on the outside looking in.
It was a quick read that invoked a lot of feelings in me. As I was reading it, as well as after, I took the time to discuss with my teenage daughter what to do if this situation was to arise at her school.
And to discuss ways to handle situations such as bullying, etc. instead of becoming one who tears apart so many lives. This is a good way to open a discussion with a teenager about something that is going on throughout the nation a lot. I liked the fact that this book encouraged, no forced me to sit down and discuss something with my teenage daughter that can be hard to talk about.

I thought that this was one powerful book. It gripped me in the same way that We Were Liars by E. Lockhart did and it didn't let me go until I closed the book. I am still trying to wrap my head around what I think about it. It is hard to say that you liked a book that covers such a hard and sensitive topic. I have a difficult time reading books about shootings because they are still going on and are such an important issue in our country. However, I do believe that the subject matter was handled well and the writing was very beautiful. Overall, a 5 star book.

Das Buch war an sich nicht schlecht, jedoch wurde es dem schwierigen Thema leider nicht gerecht.
Ich kann nicht sagen, was ich mir davon erwartet habe, jedoch waren Stil und Charakterisierung für ein solches Thema zu schwach und unausgegoren.

This didn't live up to expectations and I wasn't able to finish it. I was disappointed in the density of the plot and lack of full emotional look into this real issue.

I found this book hard to read and even harder to review but here goes. As soon as I saw the cover and read the blurb I wanted to read this book and placed an order. School shootings are horrific and yet are something that needs to be written about so we can engage and discuss with teens in the safe way that fiction provides. I found this book so disappointing. The characters were stereotypical. It felt like everyone and the kitchen sink were represented as students in this novel . Presenting multiple students points of view can be a good thing however in this book the multiple narration so was overwhelming, skimming the surface of issues and feelings making it hard as a reader to connect. Overall this book had potential but didn't deliver.

This book about a school shooting, told in multiple perspectives, is fascinating and made for a quick read. This book could be shared with classes and/or a book club.

Being a third-grade teacher this was the book I was most excited to get approved to read. I was not disappointed! It was an excellent read. Although I will not add it to my curriculum for my students to read, I am taking ideas from the book and implementing them into my teaching styles daily. I also think that not only is this a book that teachers of various age students should read I think parents would greatly benefit from reading this book. I highly recommend reading this book!

One student is all it takes to impact a community forever. In the age of preventing a shooting at school take a look into the lives of a handful of students as they encounter our worst fear as parents, students and members of a community.

This Is Where It Ends, by Marieke Nijkamp, is a heart wrenching and intense story about a horrific occurrence that happens all too often these days.
A mass shooting at a school with one shooter and many victims.
The story is told over the span of 54 minutes.
I applaud the author's inclusion of diversity in race, sexuality and disabilities among the well-developed characters.
A powerfully compelling and haunting debut filled with gripping emotion and suspense.
This novel sends a real message about not only the victims but the survivors too.

I look forward to more of this author's work.

Thank you to Net Galley and Sourcebooks Fire for an arc of this novel

I finished this book on my morning commute to work, and realised too late this was a mistake, as I was emotionally traumatised. This is a fantastic book.

A great book to read for anyone with students in school, or students who are in school. We used this book as a middle/high school all read book. The story brings to life how it would feel to be in the middle of a school shooting. It also reminds you that everyone has their own story, and not to presume you know everything about a person.

I was so looking forward to reading this. However, when I started reading it (and I gave it several attempts) I found it just a little heavy-going. I feel like I knew what the subject matter was going to be before I started it but it was just a little too much for me?

Interesting book. I'm hearing a lot of buzz about it lately. :)

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.