Blog Post 3 -- Review of Free Pick

Topic --  for Blog Post 3 you will be reviewing your free pick book choice.  Inform your readers of what you have read and what you thought of it.  Give your personal response, make a recommendation as to the type of reader who might like it, tell of its unique qualities, don't reveal any spoilers, compare the book to others like it.



My Recent Read-

 Since Readers' Choice started this semester, I have been hearing students talking about a book called This is Where it Ends.  I had not heard of the book before and had no idea what it was about.  After book talks the other day, I had a couple of conversations with students who had read it and highly recommended that I read it too. So yesterday I read it.

This is Where it Ends  by Marieke Nijkampe, captures the 59 minutes in which a school shooting takes place.  It is told from the points of view of several of the students who are at the school and follows their thoughts and actions for those 59 minutes.  The book is suspenseful and kept me reading; in fact, I started and finished the book in one day.  The emotions are intense as is the overall topic.  The book does make a reader question how a school shooter is created and what each of us might do to end this threat to our daily existence.

The characters whose points of view we see include Autumn, the sister of the shooter;  Sylv, her girlfriend; Tomas, Sylv's brother; and Claire, a senior who is outside of the school when the shooting begins.  Each of these characters is linked to the shooter in some way and each experiences the tragedy in a different manner.  The author uses flashbacks to tell the story of these adolescents and the problems that each has experienced leading up to this shooting.  Keeping the different characters straight at times proved difficult and the structure of the book limited the author's ability to fully develop these individuals, but I would still recommend this book to readers of YA literature with a warning that the subject matter is intense and the killing is disturbing in its extent and cruelty.  Tyler, the shooter, has lost touch with his humanity.

It is a sad commentary on modern society that Goodreads  has classified books like this with their own heading, School Shooting Fiction.  Other books with a focus on a school shootings that I have read and would recommend are Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult and Finding Jake by Bryon Riordan.  Unfortunately, school shootings have become part of our world, but that does not mean we must give up hope.  Nijkampe tries to instill hope and redemption in her book through the heroic and human actions of various characters.  Raising awareness about a serious topic, This is Where it Ends makes readers question, "Where does it end?"