"Before I Let Go"

Marieke Nijkamp was born and raised in the Netherlands. A lifelong student of stories, language, and ideas, she spends as much time in fictional worlds as she does the real world. She loves to travel, roll dice, and daydream. Her #1 New York Times bestselling debut novel, This Is Where It Ends, follows four teens during the fifty-four minutes of a school shooting. Her sophomore novel, Before I Let Go, is a haunting young adult murder mystery set during a cruel Alaskan winter.

Nijkamp applied the Page 69 Test to Before I Let Go and reported the following:

Page 69 of Before I Let Go is only half a page, but very representative of the first part of the book. It’s a fragment of a phone call between Corey, the main character, and Eileen, one of Corey’s friends at her boarding school. In it, Corey talks about returning home. Home is Lost Creek, Alaska, the place she used to live before her family up and moved to Canada. Home is where Kyra, Corey’s best friend since childhood, lived. Except, Kyra died mere days before Corey got on the plane back, and now she’s left with discovering what exactly happened in the months since she was away. As a result, Corey has to confront secrets about Lost Creek and about herself. She has to confront a home that doesn’t feel like a home anymore, where nothing is quite how she remembered it or even entirely real. People call her an outsider. Corey tells Eileen, “I feel like a stranger.“ But what she doesn’t know yet, is that things are only about to get stranger from here.

Visit Marieke Nijkamp's website.

The Page 69 Test: This Is Where It Ends.

--Marshal Zeringue