Title: Hate List
Author: Jennifer Brown
Summary: On the first day of her senior year Valerie Leftman walks into the school that only months before was terrorized by a school shooting. The gunman? Valerie’s boyfriend Nick. To some, she is a hero because she took the final bullet before Nick turned the gun on himself. To others, she is just as guilty as Nick – after all, she was the one who kept the ‘Hate List’ Nick used to target his victims: A notebook full of the names of the people who bullied, teased, and tormented Val, Nick and their friends.
She has always been an outcast, but now she feels truly alone, without the one person who really understood her and unable to even mourn his loss. This impossible-to-put-down, honest book follows Val through the aftermath of the shootings and her senior year: Her slow recovery, her therapy sessions, the long days at school and the crumbling of her family. She finds both friendship and scorn in unexpected places, but can the world ever really forgive her? Can she forgive herself?
Who will like this book?: Fans of intense fiction about healing and coming to terms with your actions.
If you like this, try this: Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. Columbine by David Cullen. Another excellent book about tragedy and healing, All We Know of Heaven by Jacqueline Mitchard.
Recommended by: Nicole, Teen Librarian