At the End of Everything: The World Never Wanted Them. They Refused to Be Forgotten

Written by Marieke Nijkamp

Narrated by Justis Bolding, Theresa Buchheister, Kevin R. Free and Laura Knight Keating

They've been left to die. Can they figure out how to live?

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 the group is 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781705051627

Marieke Nijkamp

Marieke Nijkamp is the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of This Is Where It Ends. She is a storyteller, dreamer, globe-trotter, and geek. She currently resides in her home country, the Netherlands.

Reviews for At the End of Everything

[hccpsk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A ragtag bunch of teens finds themselves abandoned at Hope Juvenile Treatment Center when the world collapses under a pandemic. Marieke Nijkamp throws a little bit of everything into this book with characters struggling with identity, abuse, etc. while trying to survive. Told through a variety of characters' voices, YA readers who enjoy a Hunger Games-esque atmosphere along with social and emotional justice themes will find an interesting book with At The End of Everything.

[standhenry · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This timely thriller about kids versus the world is fantastic and I couldn't put it down! A group of teens at Hope Juvenile Treatment Center in Arkansas live with lots of rules, locked doors, and zero freedom. Then one day everything changes. The adults are gone and the doors are unlocked. Happy to venture out into the world, they discover a deadly pandemic is underway and they have been mandated back to the center. With no one to help them, and nowhere to go, they must figure out a way to survive. As food and medicine supplies run low, they go to town on missions and find the townspeople are hostile and scared. The story has lots of highs and lows as they navigate how to work together and what to do when things get out of hand. Strong attachments are formed and sacrifices made. The themes of acceptance and working together make this an unforgettable story that I highly recommend!

[jfe16 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Review of eBook fileDespite its name, the Hope Juvenile Treatment Center is particularly devoid of hope, especially for its residents. Here teens who may or may not be delinquents find themselves incarcerated in a place where everything they do is controlled and supervised by guards. Meals, classes, therapy or group therapy, work in the community garden . . . it all happens according to the routine.For the teens, routine is everything until the day the adults begin acting strangely . . . and then vanish.It doesn’t take long for ten of the teens to decide to leave . . . only to find heavily-armed soldiers guarding the road and asking for their permits. From the soldiers, the teens learn that a plague has forced government officials to declare a total lockdown. No one can leave their house or travel outside town borders without a permit. Reluctantly returning to the center, the young people take stock of their meager provisions and their lack of support; ultimately, they set about doing whatever is necessary to survive.What will happen to the abandoned young people? Will the plague claim their lives or will they find a way to survive?In a sort of apocalyptic event [eerily reminiscent of events related to the still-lingering Covid-19 pandemic], adults abandon a group of teens, leaving them alone with no thought for their welfare or for their potential survival. Even more incredibly, they simply vanish without letting the young people know what is happening in the towns outside the center.The promising story has moments of genuine impact and it’s easy for the reader to feel true empathy for the situation in which the young people find themselves. But the premise that the adults would simply walk away and leave the teens to their own devices is extremely difficult to accept [willing suspension of disbelief notwithstanding].Unfortunately, the obvious effort to create a diverse/politically-correct group . . . black, white, Asian, Mexican, disabled/special needs, trans/nonbinary . . . seems more important than any true character development for the teens at the center of this ominous tale. The unfolding story centers around three characters [Grace, Logan, and Emerson] and their interactions with the other teens, but each of the characters serves primarily as a stereotype for the group or behavior type they represent. As a result, the lack of character depth and the failure to provide any significant backstory for the teens make any meaningful connection with the characters difficult for the reader even though they may find cathartic, emotional moments within the telling of the tale.Teen and young adult readers are the targeted audiences for this narrative; unfortunately for the book, it may simply be too soon to tell this story . . . many readers are likely to need a greater distance between the telling of this tale and the ongoing pandemic struggles they are dealing with in real life.I received a free copy of this eBook from Sourcebooks Fire and NetGalley#AtTheEndOfEverything #NetGalley