📖 Novel of the Week: This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

It's the first day of the new semester at Opportunity High School: the athletics team is training outside, even if it's winter, while the rest of the students are listening to principal Trenton speech. Same speech, same routine, same old stuff in Opportunity, Alabama.
But when it's time to go back to class, the Auditorium's doors don't open and that's the very start of a 50 minutes nightmare!
While everyone is wondering what's going on (are the doors broke or is some kind of stupid prank?) Tyler Browne makes his way inside the Auditorium, carrying a gun and shooting to anybody who tries to stop him.
His ex-girlfriend, Claire, is in the athletics team and, after hearing the gun shoots, takes control of the situation and organize the team members tasks in order to understand what's going on and to call for help.
Tyler's sister, Autumn, is also in the Auditorium and struggle to find a reason for his brother's murderous turn, while her friend Sylvia is scared and yet relieved that her twin brother ditched the speech.
Tomàs and his friend Fareed are in the principal office when they hear the first gunshots: they call 911 and then go on a rescue mission...

👍👎My Thoughts

This story is overwhelming: there's just few dialogues, everything else is the descriptions of what it's in the mind of the protagonists: fears, dreams and hopes. The story is divided between four point of views and it's lacerating to read about the guilt of thoses whom, by chance or luck, weren't in the Auditorium.
Even if he's the reason why everything started, Tyler isn't the main character, but every one of them is connect to him somehow: his sister Autumn, his ex-girlfriend Claire and twins Tomàs and Sylvia, with whom Tyler has some history...
Over the past decades, there have been tons of episodes like the one described in this novel: a teenager buys himself a gun, goes to his high school and fires on the students. While I was reading, I had shivers and goosebumps, because the feelings and the situations the protagonist were experiencing are not merely fiction, unfortunately.

This is a book I'll definitely reccomend anyone to read, whether it's your usual pick when it comes to novels or not. It's moving, it makes you connect with the characters and sparks a light of hope even when you think there's no more.

My vote: 9/10

Related book and movies are:   
- Hate List by Jennifer Brown                 
- Finding Jake by Bryan Reardon                                                                                           

- "Bowling for Colombine" (2002) by Michael Moore
- "Elephant" (2003) by Gus Van Sant. With Alex Frost, Eric Deulen and John Robinson.

- "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (2011) by Lynne Ramsay. With Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, John C. Reilly and Ashley Gerasimovich. Based on 2003 same name novel by Lionel Shriver

Ph: goodreads.com