Diversify Yourself: Nijkamp writes important, captivating story

Serena Bettis • November 7, 2016

This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp is a heart-stopping, blood-pumping, page-turning story about a school shooting, told from four riveting points of view. Taking place in just 54 minutes, Nijkamp connects the reader with four students who all have some personal connection or grievance with Tyler, the shooter – his sister, the girl he sexually assaulted, that girl’s brother, and his ex-girlfriend. With some main characters trapped inside an auditorium where the shooting is happening, and others stuck on the outside looking for a way to help, the reader gets a full look into how the shooting went down.

My favorite part about the book was the way the characters had flashbacks, not in a way where suddenly the book just goes back in time to explain some detail, but as though the characters were actually thinking about that one time to help them make sense of what was going on in the present. I also liked how the flashbacks weren’t providing justification for what Tyler was doing, in some cases it was more along the lines of them thinking “how could he be doing this when he acted this way towards me?” This book was, however, lacking in some ways. Because it only spans over less than an hour, it feels as though there isn’t much developing going on. Obviously, the plot develops in a way that there’s a shooter, and he keeps killing people, and then eventually students make their way to safety, but there’s little suspense, and character development (one of my favorite things about books) isn’t possible in such a short amount of time. I think that this book would be better thought of as a really long short story, because in the end it doesn’t truly feel like I read a novel.

The best quality this book possess is that it is about a school shooting. That sounds like a bad thing, but it is unbelievably important to write and read about topics that people typically avoid. The thought that ran through my mind the most while I was reading this was “What if a school shooting happened at my school?” It’s something that, in my opinion, goes through everyone’s mind at least once when they learn about some school shooting (especially in Colorado, with Columbine), and it’s a good question to ask. Not only will it make you prepared physically and strategically if a school shooting did happen, but reading the thoughts going on inside students’ minds as they went through it made me think deeper into the reasons as to why someone would do such a thing. You have to look back and think: Could I have stopped this? Would anyone have seen it coming? I think it also helps you understand that not everything is black and white – the shooter in This Is Where It Ends had good qualities and bad, things that went wrong in his life and things that could’ve been okay.

These questions and thoughts are not things that need exact answers, but they are extremely important things to think about as we grow up and go through tragedies. That is why I believe that even though the book is not the greatest, it’s something everyone should consider reading. Nijkamp’s writing style is captivating, and that combined with the intense honesty given from the characters makes This Is Where It Ends an incredibly worthwhile read.

Story continues below advertisement

Donate to Etched in Stone

$150

$1000

Contributed

Our Goal

Your donation will support the student journalists of Fossil Ridge High School. Your contribution will allow us to purchase equipment and cover our annual website hosting costs.

About the Contributor

Serena Bettis, Editor-in-Chief

Serena Bettis, senior, is entering into her third year on the Etched in Stone staff as this year’s Editor-in-Chief. A four year journalism student, she has high hopes for Etched in Stone this school year, and wants to be able to guide the staff in achieving their goals as much as possible. While Bettis has become a much more outspoken person than she was when she started at Fossil Ridge High School, she still finds discomfort speaking in front of large groups of people (“large” being defined anywhere from 6 to 30), but is more than ready to grow in that aspect of leadership over the course of the year. Most of her journalistic goals for the year are not personal, but rather involve the entire program. She aims to further improve upon the look of the Etched in Stone website, which she spent countless hours on her junior year, enough for it to win awards before she graduates.

Aside from Etched in Stone, Bettis takes part in the school marching, jazz, and concert bands as a flute player, volunteers with Key Club, and is the Historian for the National Honor Society. She has also held a part-time job at TCBY for over a year, and now knows more than she needs to about the sugar content in frozen yogurt. In her spare time, which is often hard to come by, Bettis can be found reading for fun, lamenting about how none of the new Young Adult romance novels she used to love so much are good anymore, working on making the perfect French macaron, or binge watching her recent addiction, Game of Thrones. Music is a large part of her life, and her favorite genre is difficult to describe because she listens to many different bands. Some of her favorites include twenty one pilots, All Time Low, and Halsey, more alternative bands such as Issues and SWMRS, pop artists including Carly Rae Jepsen (“she’s so much more than “Call Me Maybe””), and Little Mix, and various songs by Spanish singers.

She is more than ready for graduation, and aspires to be attending college in Chicago by this time next year. Bettis knows that she wants to double major in journalism and foreign languages, with a potential minor in music, though she is undecided on what specific occupation she wants after college. Her best advice to someone who does not know what they are interested in is to simply join different activities and see what happens from there. “Eventually, sometime during sophomore year, journalism became the only class I wanted to go to, and even now I love it more than I used to love band, so that’s when it hit me that this was what I wanted to be involved in for most of my life,” she said. Another somewhat undecided goal of hers is to join the Peace Corps either during or after college, and she hopes that an experience in a different country with complete strangers might help her figure out what exactly she wants to do with her life.