Hate List by Jennifer Brown

May 2, 2008: high school junior Nick Levil opened fire in his school cafeteria, killing several students, one teacher, and injuring several others who had been on his "hate list". Before turning the gun on himself, the last person he shot (inadvertently) was his girlfriend, Valerie Leftman, who had jumped in front of the intended target. Though what she did was heroic, she is nevertheless questioned by the police for her role in the shootings -for Valerie was the one who started the hate list, the list of people and things she and Nick hated. Despite the fact that she had no prior knowledge of the shooting, didn't know he planned to use the list for a shooting rampage, and never pulled the trigger herself, Val is surrounded by a cloud of suspicion. When she goes back to school in the fall she has to face everyone affected by the tragedy, from those whose friends were killed to those still suffering from their injuries, to those whose cruelty toward herself and Nick were the catalysts for the list's creation.

This was such a heavy book. Unlike with most other books, I don't think I laughed or smiled once while reading it. Still, I thought it was fantastic. Once I started it I didn't want to put it down. Had I not been so busy this week you would have read this review days ago.

Right off the bat, what I loved about this book was the story was laid out. It goes back and forth, from the present to the past, from how Valerie is coping with going back to high school an even bigger outcast than before, to that awful day in May when Nick opened fire and part of what motivated him to do so. Spreading out the details throughout the book the way Brown does, for the reader, the shooting never loses its emotional intensity the way it would if the narrative was completely linear.

Mainly, though, this is Valerie's story: how she continues to feel the effects of the bullying that started the whole thing, how she blames herself and must coexist with those who still don't want to be around her (including her own family and friends), and even how, after everything, she still loves Nick. Valerie has some of the worst, least understanding and least compassionate, parents I've ever seen in a book. They, coupled with Val's treatment by her peers and general feeling like she doesn't belong, makes it easy to see how she could have become involved with someone like Nick, a fellow outcast with an obsession with death that was far more serious than she or anyone else understood.

A fantastic book that's both timely and intense, Hate List is sure to be a bestseller.

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