This is Where it Ends, by Cindy K. Sproles

This Is Where It Ends by Cindy K. Sproles

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Goodreads Blurb: “When Minerva Jane Jenkins was just 14 years old, she married a man who moved her to the mountains. He carried with him a small box, which he told her was filled with gold. And when he died 50 years later, he made her promise to keep his secret. She is to tell no one about the box or the treasure it contains.

Now 94, Minerva is nearing the end of what has sometimes been a lonely life. But she’s kept that secret. Even so, rumors of hidden gold have a way of spreading, and Minerva is visited by a reporter, Del Rankin, who wants to know more of her story. His friend who joins him only wants to find the location of the gold. Neither of them knows quite who they’re up against when it comes to the old woman on the mountain.

As an unlikely friendship develops, Minerva is tempted to reveal her secret to Del. After all, how long is one bound by a promise? But the truth of what’s really buried in the box may be hidden even from her.”

This story did not deliver on that intriguing blurb. (I am going against the tide on this one.)



Where to start?

I wanted to like Minerva Jenkins, but she mostly succeeded in getting on my nerves, always clutching at her heart and praying for the Good Lord to come fetch her, only to live another day and aggravate me all over again. After any great trial or tribulation, she would say it was God’s will and that we were meant to learn from all that grief or trouble, or that He had a different plan for us, etc. etc. (I wasn’t buying this yo-yoing faith of Minerva’s, sorry!)



So many “time bombs” were exploded in this novel. When, at one point, Minerva used the idiom “that was not Kosher” I literally had to stop, go back to the beginning, and check the dates and timelines. There were so many gaffes like this one.



There was just so much wrong about this story and these lackluster characters.

My biggest beef: how many times does a near-blind, Rheumatic 90-year old lady have to be manhandled, knocked down, burnt out of her house, etc., before she gives up the ghost?



And those long, constant debates about whether she would keep THE SECRET (which turned out to be incredibly anti-climactic, I must say!)… I began to groan aloud whenever I saw her heading back into one of those repetitive inner monologues.

Obviously, I did not enjoy slogging through this story. I stuck with it because I wanted to know THE SECRET. I suspected many times that even the author didn’t know what the secret was for most of this story, because the final chapters went in a completely different direction with that not so surprising “surprise twist.” My level of irritation with the “he loves me, he loves me not” inner dialogues ran a close second to the constant “should I keep this secret and why” debate.



It was a relief to flip the last page of this repetitive, uninspiring and unthrilling thriller. This author can write a decent sentence, but will I be seeking out her other works? If they are anything like this rambling, hodgepodge, stuck-together-with-tape-and-glue story, then most definitely not.

I was granted an ARC of this novel by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My rating – and I am being NICE here – is a 2.6 rounded up to a 3.



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