ISBN 13: 978-0316041447
Publish Date: September 1st 2009
Read Date: 03/23/2018 - 03/27/2018
Hate List by Jennifer Brown takes you through the eyes of Valerie.
Valerie and her boyfriend Nick are juniors in High School. They are crazy about each other, but have more enemies and bullies than their decent amount of friends. They spend alot of their time deciding who to put in the "Hate Book". Their hate book list ranges from classmates that have bullied them, teachers that annoy them and general things they just don't like, such as homework. Valerie thought the book was just a joke, a way to vent out frustrations. On May 2nd, Valerie learned that Nick felt differently about the list.
May 2nd started like any other day for Valerie and the rest of her classmates. On the school bus, Valerie was bullied by her usual foe which caused her to break her mp3 player. Once at school, Valerie tells Nick what happened on the bus and to he tells her he will "handle it".
Little did Valerie know, handling it meant revenge shooting. At first Valerie couldn't figure out what was going on, once she did she didn't recognize that Nick was using the Hate list as his victim guide. Once all the events registered with Valerie, she decided she had to stop Nick.
In the process of stopping Nick, Valerie is shot in the leg in turn, accidentally saving a classmate, Jessica. Valerie had not intended to save Jessica because she was one of the classmates who has made life hell for Valerie and Nick.
valerie kept to herself over the summer, recovering from her leg injury and staying out of sight from classmates who hated, and blamed her, and seeing a therapist to help her. Dr. Heiler, the therapist convinced Val to return to school for her senior year.
Valerie returns to school, to find a mixture of hated, fear and support from her classmates and school staff. The rest of the book takes you through the school year and how Val and the rest of the students learn to cope with the violence that occurred the previous year and make it through to graduation.
It is a hard read, as books about school shootings are expected to be. However I was not disappointed.
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