Emma Giordano's Reviews > This Is Where It Ends: Library Edition

This is a really hard one to review because on one hand, I think it is a fantastically written book that deserves all the praise, but on the other, it wasn't really for me and I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would. So I'm settling in the middle with a good 4 star rating (5 for overall great writing, 3 for my personal reading experience) and hopefully I won't fail at explaining why I appreciate the genius of this book, but why it also wasn't that enjoyable for me.

Unfortunately, I believe I placed too many personal expectations on this book, thinking it would be a high-intensity suspense novel, but I got an entirely different reading experience than anticipated. My own personal hype is absolutely a huge reason as to why I don't think I enjoyed this book to it's full potential. I think, had I been more aware of the actual plot of the book as opposed to just knowing "it's about a school shooting," I probably would have been more prepared to read it with an unbiased mind.

It seemed that the majority of this story actually occurs through flashbacks (which is another personal book pet-peeve of mine), and the present plot was fairly static, in my opinion, until about 70-80% of the way through the book. The course of the story is essentially that someone starts shooting, there's multiple multiple flashbacks, a scene in the present every so often that is focused on mostly dialogue between characters, more flashbacks, and then the climax/falling action/ending. I'm in no way suggesting that this format suggests a "bad book", it's just the polar opposite of what I like to read.

The writing was also really well done. The story was very vivid, especially regarding characters. The prose was eloquent, but not distracting and absolutely fueled the story in a positive way. The book itself is really interesting to me because the entirety of the story takes place over the span of less than an hour, which is pretty unheard of for the novels I read. At points, it was difficult to keep up because you have four perspectives occurring at the same time, so it often felt like you had to rewind time a bit and replay the last few minutes for someone else to fully grasp the other point of views. It is definitely something that I feel would be hard to accomplish and although it wasn't my favorite method of storytelling, I think it came across well in the end.

I say in a lot of my reviews that I am a plot-based reader. I don't need to fall head over heels in love with characters as long as there is something big driving the story. So I prematurely imagined this book would be a really elaborate, action filled novel, when it is, in my opinion, ENTIRELY character based. If you are a character-based reader where the peak of your reading pleasure comes from complex characters with intricate back stories, please read this book . It's the book for you, I promise. The characters are really the driving action of the story. I honestly can't recall better written characters. They are all individual, unique, with clear cut past experiences, current motivations, and future hopes. There's also a great load of diversity in this novel as well, with 2 LGBT+ main characters as well as 2 Latinx main characters (one being LGBT+) and more. I will say that I personally am not emotionally invested in this particular set of characters. Again, it could be because I didn't go into this story with the intention of being attached to them, but I can completely understand why so many readers are emotional over these characters. They're flawlessly constructed, really well written, and are the types of individuals who should represent a story like this.

While plot based novels are my niche, I think the fact that this story is focused on the victims and survivors of such a tragedy was the better direction for this story. It was heartbreaking to see what these characters experienced, what they lost, and what they cannot regain. This story shows school shootings for what they are; a horrific, traumatizing experience. No character leaves this story unscathed and the images/messages that will be received from this story are the ones that deserve the spotlight. Though I was hoping for a loaded plot, I feel it would have overshadowed the real meaning of the story and shifted the focus in a negative way. But I can say with sincerity that all the decisions the author made regarding this novel were the right ones, even if it wasn't what I wanted from the book at first.

So ultimately, I don't think I enjoyed this book to my full potential, but I can still appreciate the art of it's construction! It is a book I would recommend to others, and I will definitely be reading from this author in the future.