A review by betweentheshelves
At The End of Everything by Marieke Nijkamp

dark emotional tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

If you're trying to stay away from anything that feels like the COVID pandemic, I'd recommend probably not picking this one up. While this is about a plague rather than a pandemic, a lot of the events feel very similar to what happened at the beginning of COVID. Things escalated much more quickly, too.

Anyway! I was expecting a more tense thriller kind of story with this one, and while those elements are there, it's more of a character driven story, focused on the teens in this detention center. Besides the plague and trying to survive, there's not much a plot driving the story. It's definitely the relationships and what transpires between this particular group of teens.

There's good representation here, with a variety of identities represented throughout the story. For the most part, I didn't necessarily feel emotionally invested in their story, but maybe that's because it felt too real? I can't quite put my finger on it. The descriptions of all of the measures they were taking against the plague, though, did feel very real. I did appreciate the world building and the extra pieces of news and information between the chapters. It helped build the intensity overall.
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