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Hate List
by Jennifer Brown
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$16.99 |
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$11.55 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
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Hardcover
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN13: 9780316041447
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Five months ago, Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets.
Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life.
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Run For Cover |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Valerie, 17 is living a nightmare. On Friday, May 2, 2008 her boyfriend Nick shoots several of their classmates and one teacher. The teacher and some of the classmates die in the bloodbath. Several more are severely injured. One girl's face is destroyed and another sustains severe nerve damage to her hand, which ends her violin career. Nick shoots Valerie just as she pushes a popular classmate named Jessica to safety.
Very few people realize Valerie saved Jessica and in so doing saved others from being killed. Nick is also a casualty of May 2, 2008 as he turns the gun on himself with fatal consequences. Valerie sustains a minor gunshot wound to her leg and is left to recouperate in the hospital. She also is shot down by a dogged reporter named Angela Dash who crucifies her in print and by a Detective Panzella who hounds her mercilessly in the hospital.
Valerie's family, save her kind and astute brother Frankie, 14 treat her like a leper. The girl's mother has her committed to the psychiatric wing shortly before she is discharged from the hospital. Valerie is not warned of this in advance. How traumatic it was for her to be carted upstairs against her will, only to be sedated hypodermically en route to the 4th floor! Valerie then serves 10 days of horror in the hellhole on the 4th floor. The doctor in charge, Dr. Dentley sounded like a cruel and boorish oaf. Nobody would even listen to Valerie! In order to survive this inappropriate placement with people who suffered from severe and debilitating mental illnesses including inmates who inflicted severe harm to themselves, such as cutters, Valerie pretends to agree with her captors so she can be released from this hell.
Once released, Valerie sees an outpatient psychiatrist regularly. Dr. Hieler is Dr. Dentley's (Doltley, really) polar opposite. A kind, sympathetic man, the aptly named Dr. Hieler (the healer) gains Valerie's trust by telling her that he will never lie to her; he won't push her if she is not ready to talk about something and that he won't pretend to know what she is going through as he has never lived through a school shooting.
Valerie has a lot of survival to do. Her doctor, a kind art teacher named Bea and a few classmates along with school counselor Mrs. Tate accept her and try to help her survive returning to her district high school. Valerie then re-evaluates her relationship with Nick, the boyfriend cum killer, the person she trusted more than anyone else.
Nick has a sensitive side that contradicts his spurts of anger and the Hate List he and Valerie compose. The Hate List is a compilation of students they feel have wronged them. While Valerie is just blowing off steam, Nick is nursing a growing grudge and plans to act on it with deadly repercussions. Sadly, Valerie literally takes the fall out and even her own mother blames her and her father is downright cruel to her. I thought him a rather beastly person and was glad when he finally moved out. The marital acrimony between Valerie's parents had reached a crescendo and Valerie learns of the man's new girlfriend by accident.
"Hate List" is a very intense and riveting book. It might even make you cry. It is an excellent illustration of how no person is all good or all bad. The students on the Hate List who survived the rampage are realistically multi-faceted. Even Nick had a gentle side, one that loved Shakespeare and poetry. As brutish as Valerie's father was and in one especially intense part, one can understand why he was all too eager to leave the family home. His cruelty to Valerie might even make you cry and feel disgust towards him. Teachers, administrators as well as other students and their responses and decisions all make a deep story even better.
I could not put this book down and read it all the way through. It made me think of May 2, 2009 which was a Saturday, which I felt was fortunate as most students would not have been at the school on the 1-year anniversary.
Thank you, Ms. Brown. I highly recommend this to discussion groups; educators; parents and medical professionals. This is a book we really do need.
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| A powerful and great read! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This is one of the best books I've ever read! It's a spectacular story of the struggle that a teen girl faces against herself, her classmates, and the actions her boyfriend made that will change her life forever. If you have any doubts about reading this book, just go ahead and read it!
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| Unique perspective on a tragedy |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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This book is told from Valerie's perspective, the girlfriend of Nick who opened fire on the crowded high school cafeteria. Valerie, shocked by what her boyfriend was doing, ran to stop him when he shot her in the leg and then shot himself. Valerie is either vilified or declared a hero by her classmates and community, but she is neither. She was terrified, and she didn't set out to be a hero, but she never thought about killing the people on her Hate List. She might have said she wished they were dead, but she didn't mean it, no more than anyone means it when they say that kind of thing. But Nick meant it. I felt so bad for Valerie and I applaud Brown for not making Nick into a purely evil villain. He did a horrible, evil thing, but he was kind to Valerie and he was a good boyfriend. The bulk of this book is told in flashbacks, with Valerie remembering the morning of the shooting and trying to survive at school the next fall.
I admit, I almost put this book down when I saw the Nickelback song quote at the beginning, and I thought that it dipped into the cheesy at some points, but for the most part I thought this was a really great YA novel that deals with an unbelievably difficult topic. We don't often hear the people like Valerie's story, the people that loved the murderers, before they were evil, before they crossed that line. Try to not cry when you read this book, just try.
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| A Good Addiction Reviews |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Holy crap. This book got to me in so many ways. From the powerful story to Valerie's inner thoughts it completely pulled at me. If you want a book that will make you really feel something, this is it. It isn't too often a book affects me enough to make me cry but this one did- a huge compliment to the author.
The story itself is somewhat told in pieces with some chapters telling what happened on May 2, the day of the shooting, others talking about Valerie's summer where she tried to recover from the gunshot wound to her thigh, being involved and accused with the shooting, and getting over losing Nick, and still more telling her story of returning to school in the fall, facing the gauntlet of people who believe she is just as guilt as Nick. I really enjoyed the scattered layout of this book and never once did I find it choppy. It kept the intrigue going and everything correlated, also getting across the message that even as she's in school that next fall, she is still reliving that day and everything after.
Valerie was a very deep, very dimensional character. Yes, it was Nick who pulled the gun on people but Valerie began the Hate List- a spiral notebook where the couple wrote down anything and anyone that they hated. It started as a joke but at some point that Valerie didn't realize, Nick turned it into reality. From texts and emails to that book and conversations they had, everything that had to do with hating the world came back full force at Valerie. From a learning standpoint, it is a fantastic aspect of the book because many teenagers don't realize what an impact things they say and do can have later. On the flip side, I thought even the detectives were blowing it out of proportion because how many people say they hate something when they are mad? How many people wish bad things on others out of anger and frustration? That doesn't mean they will pull a gun and what an emphasis everyone put on that book really did bother me. It was an outlet- a way to vent- and I firmly believe that even without that book, Nick still would have brought a gun to school that day.
Nick was shown in different lights but the defining thing was how Valerie saw him- the boy she fell for and had been with for three years rather than the kid who shot up the school. That Nick was a stranger to her. She remembered the boy who could quote Hamlet, who read most of Shakespeare, and who slept on a mattress on the floor of his basement because that's the only room he had. He understood her on a level others didn't and they were best friends.
This is a book about bullying but cast in a somewhat different light. Nick was not a complete loner. He had a girlfriend and he had friends, even if they were the school losers and outcasts. But he was also bullied, as was his girlfriend. The fact that Valerie couldn't get through the morning bus ride without being tormented by one of the popular kids and had the nickname Sister Death because the populars didn't like the way she dressed was made clear throughout the book. Valerie was tormented- only she didn't act out like Nick did. Even Nick's friends didn't know the full extent of what Nick was feeling and thinking, making the point that you never really know and no matter how hard you look, sometimes it just isn't there to be seen.
As far as bad parents go, Valerie's just might win an award although they were very well written, came up often, and had depth to them as well. Her father was absolutely horrible in my opinion. Very fitting, I hated him. I could understand some of her mother's behaviors but her father was just something else- something very not good. This didn't just happen after the shooting either- it was already there but Valerie being an initial suspect in the shooting only made things worse. But what would you do when you knew your father hated you? That he blamed you and wouldn't forgive you? That isn't an easy place for any teenager to be but particularly one with Valerie's issues and experiences. To be honest, I kept waiting for Valerie to kill herself or run away because of how hard everything hit down on her but she didn't and I think that is phenomenal. Where many other teens would have given up, Valerie kept going which sends a strong message.
The ending was possibly as heartbreaking as the rest of the book but also comforting and provided closure. This is an ending that will stick with me just as much as the book as a whole. Jennifer Brown has shown her amazing writing ability, thrusting a rough subject into the spotlight and pulling in the reader. I felt every emotion Valerie did, hoping for the best but fearing the worst. If this is a book you can stomach, I recommend it. It has an amazing message about healing, bullying and blame. This is a review I am not even sure did it justice because of how strongly this book got into my mind and if you know me, you'll know what a compliment my final thought is. This book hit me as powerfully as 19 Minutes did and I won't be forgetting it.
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| A Must Read!! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Wow! This was one very powerful and very riveting story!
The actual shooting occured in May, but the story begins the following September as Valerie is preparing to head back to school for her senior year. Focusing more on Valerie and the after affects of the shooting, makes Hate List more of a character driven novel and it worked really well for this particular situation. I loved how Brown also incorperated clippings of the newpaper articles from the shooting into the first half of the story as well. Definitely making this a memorable novel, even long after finishing it.
It was quite heartbreaking to read about Valerie's very emotional roller coaster - her struggle with her guilt and trying to understand her true feelings for Nick.
This was a brilliantly written, fantastic debut. A must read!!
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