Review Detail

MY THOUGHTS
After reading the synopsis, I had to read this book. This book spans only 54 horrifying minutes of a school shooting. I was very curious as to how this book would be put together and how it would tackle such a tough subject. I thought it handled everything really well and the book was very well written!

The way this book is written is very unique and I admit that I was also very intrigued by the formatting. Not only does this book's story last less than an hour, and even gives a time-stamp each 'chapter', but there were multiple different perspectives as well. We see the event through the eyes of Claire, Tomas, Autumn, and Sylv. I was a little thrown at first to have so many different perspectives, but the characters were so immensely different and so well-developed, that I was easily able to differentiate them. First I would like to mention that all the characters are very diverse! What I also liked was how we got to see the backgrounds of all four of the characters and how they all were somehow connected to the shooter.

I really liked this book and I thought it was very unique and harshly real, but for some reason I cannot bring myself to give this book a 5/5. I feel bad saying this, but for some reason this book didn't make me feel as strongly as I thought it should've made me feel. Did I feel anything at all? Yes! Of course! I'm not entirely heartless! But I didn't feel on the edge the whole time, with my heart being torn into shreds.

IN CONCLUSION
Overall, I thought this was a very stand-out debut novel! I was very impressed by it! The writing was fantastic, the characters were very well-developed, and the tough subject matter was handled very well. For some reason this book didn't make me as emotional as I expected from the subject, but I still liked this book. I will most definitely be reading any other books Marieke Nijkamp writes!