Hate List by Jennifer Brown

The Hate List has been on the top of my wish list for awhile and I finally managed to get a pretty decent second hand copy considering this book is quite expensive to get a hold of in my country. I've always been intrigued by the story and how it can told as it's quite a delicate matter.

After a traumatic experience Valerie has spent the summer secluded away attending therapy sessions to relive her mind of the awful day when everything changed in her small suburban town. Now Valerie must return to complete her last year of school, but she must face the guilt of the infamous Hate List she created with her boyfriend Nick which so happened to leave a wake of tragedy behind them. Will her classmates be so forgiving and will she forever forgive herself.

The theme of Hate List is quite tricky to write especially since it happens the most in America, so it has to be written in a delicate way which I thought was beautifully done. I really liked the fact that Jennifer Brown chose to write flashbacks, which lead up to the events of the shootings and the major fallout afterwards. This definitely had a nice steady pace, which I thoroughly sped through and that I now consider one of my all time favourite books.

Throughout I followed what Valerie had to go through, emotionally and physically after the shooting, as she had to come to terms that her trusted boyfriend Nick wrecked havoc on school grounds taking out all the people that were listed on the Hate List. Valerie hated the fact that she indeed was responsible for the tragedies because of that list, something that was created to take out her anger on but majorly backfired when Nick used its entirety for something dark and sinister. The fact that Valerie thought she knew Nick so well but indeed only knew one layer of him and not actually what his true intentions were, another thing she feels guilty about because she didn't pick up on his behaviour sooner.

Of course with such a complex theme Valerie had to deal with the hate campaign against her, which subsided with time and even became civil with her peers again, which was mainly due to popular girl Jessica, the girl she saved. Val also had to struggle with the fact that her friends from before had abandoned her in her time of need and tried so hard to make amends of a somewhat fragile relationship with them.

Overall I thought this book was very realistic as we get the insight of Valerie's thoughts and memories before and after the events. I'm still unsure about the ending, as I'm not overtly keen on open endings, but because of Valerie's roller coaster life I like to believe that she's making a better life for herself somewhere faraway without being known as the personal reminder of what went wrong in her town.

*****

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You can buy Hate List online.
I brought my copy used from eBay.