Where the World Ends

this was oki read a few chapters but personally wasnt for meI think if your into this sort of genre you would like it but I like more girly adventure or romance or drama books i dont know this didnt really click with me. I feel bad writing this review but I review everything and i have to be honest so....defeintly a book that fits a certain person but I cant really describe it i am sorry thats un helpful. I would say its quite mature though, not as much the content thats fine for around age 13 but I think the style is maybe a more mature sincere yet adventurous style?

It's hard to find the words for how much I loved this book. I was completely swept up in it, and all its characters. It has such a sense of place, which is incredible when you think it's almost entirely set on a sea stack. The raw and hostile beauty and terrible isolation of the rocks where the boys were left for a summer long, and then a winter too, to survive, with no knowledge of the outside world and why they're not being picked up, and if they ever will be. I've seen it compared to Lord of the Flies - and I do think it absolutely deserves the same classic status - but this still doesn't seem to sum up the dark, frightening beauty of this story. Perhaps the book's title does that best of all. I loved the way the Great Auk was portrayed and I especially loved Quill (who actually did remind me of Ralph from Lord of the Flies, though I haven't read that book since GCSE!). I desperately want to go to St Kilda now. Also for another book about the same part of the world, I recommend Julia Green's 'To the edge of the world', which is perhaps lighter and more refreshing, but just as good in its own way. Where the World Ends is all raw beauty, though the warmth of its characters and the writing make it very much alive and keep your heart in your mouth right to the last page. I couldn't read another book for a while after finishing this one. Nothing seemed to live up to it, and ultimately I think I just wanted to live with Geraldine McCaughrean's characters, and be in St Kilda, a while longer yet.

Quill was going to a nearby rocky Island to gather eggs, bird meat and feathers, he would be gone about three weeks, 3 men and 9 children were to go, they landed on the Island, the adults Mr Cane, Mr Don and Mr Farriss and the children Morde, Quill, Kenneth, Calum, Lachlin, John, Egan, Niall and Davie, the boat was returned to the mainland, they settled into a cave known as Lower BothyOn the first day they would go after Gannets, to capture them the boys climbed a cliff, Fulmers when caught burned better than wood, the stomachs were removed from Gannets to store Fulmer oil, after three weeks of working hard the boat did not return for them, more time passed and everyone had an opinion of what had happened on the mainland, most considered the world had ended, with winter approaching fast they were unsure if they would make it, all the birds flew off in winter

This is a truly lovely story, based on the true story of the boys who were stuck on one of the stacs of St Kilda when the boat to collect them failed to arrive. The relations between the boys and the adult men is finely drawn. Good for age 11 and up if they are readers or any adult.

This was the first book I'd read by this author; I heard about it as she came highly recommended by another fantastic children's author Katherine Rundell (author of 'The Explorer.') I absolutely loved it; Geraldine's writing shines, she uses fantastic imagery and isn't afraid to fully explore the human heart. The story itself was also brilliant, and so thought provoking, dealing as it does with innocence, community, family, and how to keep faith in a hopeless situation. In many ways it reminded me of a less darker Golding's 'Lord of the Flies' in that it truly explores how this group of lost children stay sane and struggle for survival when their civilisation and homes are ripped from them; and the ending - what an ending! In short, this isn't a fluffy rainbows and ballerina type story, but if you want to give your children a future classic, a story that makes them think and feel deeply, I can't recommend this enough.