All This Could End

by Steph Bowe

[Leah]

I’ve wanted to read one of Steph Bowe’s books ever since she released her debut Girl Saves Boy but for one reason or another, it just hasn’t happened, mostly because for some reason Text Publishing haven’t bothered to put a Kindle version available for UK readers on Amazon (what a waste!). So it had to wait until I could treat myself to the paperbacks and the first one I got was All This Could End, and I actually really enjoyed it. I can see why Steph has so much buzz around her as an author as she writes incredibly believable stories, that make you care so much for the characters.

I actually didn’t know what All This Could End was about until I started reading – I didn’t read the blurb, because I like to be surprised sometimes and surprised I was! Because it’s about a family of bank robbers, specifically 17-year-old Nina, who wants out of the life. She’s sick of a life moving around all the time, sick of robbing banks, and she just wants to stay in one place long enough to settle down. The Prologue opens with her at a bank robbery in progress, and all is going well, until someone recognises her and she realises she’s holding a gun to the head of Spencer, a boy she met nine months prior. We then spool back nine months to when Nina moves to a new town and meets Spencer.

I actually really liked All This Could End. It’s hard to put into words how it made me feel, because I didn’t feel an all-consuming love for it, but I did want to get back to it time and time again and I just loved both Nina and Spencer, but Spencer in particular. Spencer’s different to most boys – he likes strange words and words that have no meaning and he lost his pinkie toe, and he’s a bit weird, to be honest, but I thought he was lovely. I loved his voice, I loved his quirky ways and I loved that he mostly kept to himself, except for his best friend Bridie and Nina when she arrives. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH LIKING YOUR OWN COMPANY, says a fellow introvert who likes her own company.

I actually had no idea HOW this book would end. It’s about bank robbers for crying out loud and I liked how Nina and her family were portrayed – let’s be honest, when you think of robbers you think mean, snarling faces and guns in your faces, etc and yet Nina and her family were just an ordinary family. That doesn’t make it right, but it does tell you that those people under the masks could be anyone and I always wonder what kind of mindset comes with someone thinking they want to rob a bank, endanger people, be wanted criminals. Because that is just not, nor will it ever be, my mind set.

I really, really enjoyed All This Could End. I loved Nina and Spencer, I loved the plot, I loved learning more about bank robbers and I really liked Steph Bowe’s conversational writing style. Her words just flow so effortlessly across the page. I’ll definitely be picking up Steph’s other two books now and I am ever glad I finally read one of hers, because I really loved All This Could End and, well, no pressure Steph, but I’d *love* a sequel.