At the End of Everything

Marieke Nijkamp — 2022

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Is Where It Ends comes another heartbreaking, emotional and timely page-turner that will keep you on the edge of your seat. The Hope Juvenile Treatment Center is ironically named. No one has hope for the delinquent teenagers who have been exiled there; the world barely acknowledges that they exist. Then the guards at Hope start acting strange. And one day...they don't show up. But when the teens band together to make a break from the facility, they encounter soldiers outside the gates. There's a rapidly spreading infectious disease outside, and no one can leave their houses or travel without a permit. Which means that they're stuck at Hope. And this time, no one is watching out for them at all. As supplies quickly dwindle and a deadly plague tears through their ranks, the group has to decide whom among them they can trust and figure out how they can survive in a world that has never wanted them in the first place. Also by Marieke Nijkamp: This Is Where It Ends Even If We Break Before I Let Go Praise for Marieke Nijkamp: Immersive and captivating. Thrilling in every sense of the word.--Karen M. McManus, #1 New York Times bestselling author of One of Us is Lying on Even If We Break With exceptional handling of everything from mental illness to guilt and a riveting, magic realist narrative, this well wrought, haunting novel will stick with readers long after the final page.--Booklist on Before I Let Go *STARRED REVIEW* A compelling, brutal story of an unfortunately all-too familiar situation: a school shooting. Nijkamp portrays the events thoughtfully, recounting fifty-four intense minutes of bravery, love, and loss.--BookRiot on This Is Where It Ends

Reviews

Sparrow Hall@sparrow_flies

Jun 30, 2023

So, I finished this book an emotional wreck. More thoughts to come soon.

Latitude Tamarind@geographreads

Aug 17, 2022

I love love LOVED “Even if We Break” by Marieke Nijjkamp so I was VERY excited to receive AT THE END OF EVERYTHING from NetGalley at no cost which thus resulted in this review. I downloaded this the instant I got it, read a few chapters, took a break to have dinner and hang out with my roommates, and then it was 3am and I was finishing it. It follows the pattern of one of my other favorite books, LIFE AS WE KNEW IT by Susan Beth Pfeffer, where a huge event happens (in that book, when an asteroid hits the moon and the tides change completely) and it changes everything, and the government isn’t doing anything so it’s up to the characters to continue to figure out how to live. It’s basically LIFE AS WE KNEW IT smash cut with THE SOCIETY, but it takes place at a juvenile detention center, and the huge event that happens is a pandemic that’s much worse than the one we are currently living through. The feeling of dread that surrounds the entire book reminds me of WILDER GIRLS, which is also about girls surviving in a remote location while terrible things happen. This story is told through first-person narration of three main characters interspersed with phone conversation transcripts. It’s extremely effective and evocative, especially as more of the characters and residents of the facility succumb to the pandemic. I loved all three of the main characters in this book: Grace, a headstrong girl who just wants a future, Emerson, a nonbinary teen who plays violin, and Logan, who is a _nonverbal autistic character_, something that I have literally never seen in a book. Was it rough reading this book during a pandemic, as cases are getting worse and worse? Yeah, a little. But it’s worth it. This ranks as one of my favorite books this year. Five stars.

Tania Sauceda@mybookworld96

Jul 21, 2022

It had too many grammar errors and was hard to understand. The story was okay, there were parts I liked and parts I didn't. Overall it was a kind of good book.

Cloey Yerger@closcollectanea

Jul 13, 2022

Marieke Nijkamp’s novel At the End of Everything takes place at the Hope Juvenile Treatment Center. The people who live there are mistreated by the guards, who abuse their power, and some were failed by the justice system. Although, we don’t know the backstory to several of the characters, most of them are not inherently bad, they’ve just done objectively bad things, and some had good reason. They are juvenile delinquents, they’ve committed crimes, but they deserve to live just as much as everyone else when a deadly plague takes the country by storm. They’re forgotten, they’re abandoned, they’re left on their own, with nothing. As food and other supplies start to decrease, and cases of the plague start to increase, they have to figure out how to survive all on their own. If I said this was a wonderfully written book, I’d be lying. The plot line was great, I loved the characters, and it felt very emotional. However, something was lacking for me. The author didn’t describe the setting or the look of the characters very well, or really at all past the color of their skin, hair, eyes, or gender. There were plenty of grammatical errors, but I think they should be fixed by the time the book is for sale. On top of all that, the ending was honestly lackluster. I very much enjoyed everything else about the plot, but I believe the characters deserve a much better ending and much better descriptions. The author did include some non-binary, poc, and disability representation though, which I very much enjoyed. I also enjoyed the story being narrated by three different characters each chapter, the rest of the characters we saw through their eyes.

Brooke Barnett@jdog123456