It only took fifty-four minutes to change the lives of everyone in the small town of Opportunity, Alabama. When Autumn Browne’s older brother showed up to school for the first time in months, everyone was surprised to see him and even more surprised to see what he was planning to do.

At Opportunity High School, Principal Trenton gives her “welcome to the semester” speech, which the upperclassmen are able to recite word for word. When her speech ends the first student to leave for class is met with an unusual circumstance: the doors to the auditorium are all locked. When everyone hears the first gunshot, they realize that nothing may ever be the same.

I enjoyed the character building in this book. The main characters are so different that there are parts of their lives that anyone could relate to. Nijkamp tells the story from the points of view of four students who all have something to lose. Claire, Opportunity’s track star who gets to skip the dreaded speech; Autumn, a dancer who wants nothing more than to get out of the small town that has been her life for 17 years; Sylvia, who is the one person keeping Autumn there, and one of the only people who knows that she kept dancing; and Tomás, Sylvia’s twin brother who was lucky enough to have detention at the time of the assembly. The author uses the four connected stories as a way to keep the reader on their toes and leave them with a question for every answer that they get.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a realistic story that will keep them on their toes.