This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

This short little book in verse follows Will as he steps onto the elevator on the seventh floor-where he lives-and travels down to street level, where he plans to get revenge on those who killed his brother. Long Way Down is about gun violence, but more than that similarity, what readers will enjoy about this book is the time frame over which it’s told. Long Way Down by Jason ReynoldsĪlthough Reynolds is far from an unknown author, many readers who loved Nijkamp’s book are likely to find an excellent entry point into Reynolds’s work through Long Way Down. The intensity and the ways in which complex emotions are handled make for an immersive experience.

Hate List will appeal to readers who valued the exploration of a school shooting in Nijkamp’s story. Valerie had helped Nick create a “hate list” of people from school, and that list was what he used in choosing his targets. The story follows the aftermath of a school shooting, wherein the main character Valerie feels both a sense of responsibility and guilt for the incident that her boyfriend coordinated. Hate List by Jennifer Brownīrown’s book, which came out in 2009, was one of the first YA books to take on the issue of school violence directly. That danger is ever-present in today’s American culture, and Nijkamp uses her intensity of storytelling not to exploit the topic, but rather to give power to those victims who often feel powerless-both when in the situation of a school shooting and because of their own marginalizations.Īlthough it would be easy to limit this list to books about school shootings, as there are many well-done titles in YA, readers who love Nijkamp’s book aren’t necessarily only interested because of that. This book takes on the contemporary issue of school violence.Readers love being thrown into the story and tossed around within it, knowing that danger is literally around every corner. This is a fast-paced read, aided in its intensity by those multiple viewpoints. Intensity is the key “feeling” throughout the book.

In this particular book, those multiple points of view come from a wealth of diverse voices, meaning that readers can likely identify with one or more of those experiences in a meaningful way.

This Is Where It Ends is told through multiple points of view, giving the story multiple layers and lenses of experience.

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