Summer '17 Book 11

This is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

I took time off from the book I was reading (which will be the next one I blog) because this finally became available on Overdrive. This was a contender for the TAYSHAS list this year, but did not make it. Still, I have been trying to get my hands on it, so it was not a big deal to put aside another one to read this one.

This is about a school shooting, and it is told by four people over the course of fifty-five minutes. One of the people telling the story is the sister of the shooter. One is her girlfriend. Another is the girlfriend's twin, and the last is a girl who is on the outside when it happens.

Every year at the beginning of the second semester at Opportunity High School, the principal holds an assembly at ten o'clock. Everyone knows this, and everyone is expected to be there. Claire isn't there because she is training for track with the rest of the track team and the track coach. Tomas isn't there because he is breaking into the principal's office with Fareed, trying to find out what the deal is with Tyler Brown, and why he is coming back to school after dropping out. Autumn and Sylvia are in the auditorium, listening to the principal. Autumn is wondering where her brother, Tyler, is because he is supposed to be coming back to finish his senior year. Sylvia is just relieved that Tyler isn't there because he has done some not so nice things to Sylvia.

Then Tyler shows up in the auditorium with guns and ammo and starts shooting. He's locked all of the doors so no one can escape. Claire and the track team hear the shots and run, quite literally, for help. Tomas and Fareed hear the shots and call 9-1-1. Sylvia and Autumn watch helplessly as their fellow schoolmates are shot down.

These four voices tell the story of what's going on from both outside the auditorium and in, and the reader can see what was done to try to save the students as well as the madness that was taking them out.

This is not the first book I have read about a school shooting. If you've read my blog enough, you know this. Although I did appreciate seeing this from four different perspectives and the timeline that things happened, it wasn't told as well as Silent Alarm or The Hate List. This wasn't bad, but I didn't like it as well as the others. Not that one should necessarily "like" a book about school shootings.