A review by carmensutra
This Is Where the World Ends by Amy Zhang

4.0

I usually try to stay away from reading too much about a book before I read it. I have been let down so many times by book reviews and the expectations I mentally build from them that years ago, I started a personal policy that I won't read reviews until after I've finished reading the book. That's why I was very surprised that after reading the book flap description for this novel, I essentially had the ENTIRE plot of the novel (except for a couple of spoilers). So, if you're reading this and haven't read the book, I urge you...GO AWAY. Go away now because the spoilers are about to begin.

Ordinarily, I'd try to see past the spoilers, but this book is intended as a mystery and the building tension that should have been there never quite formulated. I kept waiting and waiting for resolution instead of trying to solve the puzzle and follow the tension to its inevitable conclusion. This is by no means Zhang's fault, the publisher should have made the book flap description much more vague. So, if you've read nothing about this novel, keep it that way until you're done. Because I can't say this enough as a reader: I really wish I would have read this story with no prior knowledge of the plot.

The story is told from two perspectives: that of Janie and Micah, secret best friends who live and breath for each other but keep their relationship hidden to the rest of the world. Janie is the free-spirited popular girl who stops just shy of being a manic pixie dream girl. Much of her story is told from the pages of her journal. Micah is her best friend, hopelessly dorky (and cute) trying to reconcile their public and private lives. At the beginning of the novel, he is trying to remember what has happened.

The biggest plus of this book is that it was beautifully, exquisitely written. Here are some excerpts:

From the soul-stirring dedication: "To the girls with matches in their fists and fire in their hearts."

To the Micah's confusion: "My brain is liquid. They press and press information but my brain is liquid. They touch the surface, it ripples and it goes blank again."

To Janine's Metaphor: "She stacked the matches higher and higher until the teachers huffed and puffed that little girls shouldn't play with dangerous things. Besides, they told her, it was against school rules. So the little girl put her matches in her pocket and went on to build a house out of rocks. Her parents and her teachers and the whole town huffed and puffed, but no one could knock this house down and no one could keep her away. She named the house of rocks The Metaphor and spent every moment she could there with a boy who never huffed and never puffed."

And some other beauties because Zhang's writing can not be complimented enough:

"I remember forgetting and there's more."

"We balance the world accidentally."