2018 Challenge - Book #7 - Hate List

Today is the last day of the kid's Christmas break.  Here in Switzerland, the kids have a full two weeks off from school.  We had a nice break - went to London for the new year, and did a lot of relaxing and sleeping in.  Tomorrow it is back to the grind.

This morning I finished reading - Hate List

Author: Jennifer Brown
Pages: 397

This is a story of a school shooting.  Valerie - a high school junior - is walking into her school on a typical May day with her boyfriend Nick.  She is upset because a bully has just broken her phone on the bus, and she and Nick are on their way to confront her.  What Valerie doesn't know is that Nick has brought a gun to school that day, and plans on taking the lives of several students he felt have "wronged" him over the years. 

In the process of the confusion, Valerie is shot before Nick turns the gun on himself.  What the story becomes is what happens to Valerie - who survives - returns to life after the shooting.  Many people believe she was involved because of Nick.  Her parents don't trust her alone.  They don't want her to return to school, but she insists she is ready.  She needs to prove that she is innocent.

This was an okay book.  I actually read the first 250 pages quickly.  But then the author seemed to give up.  The story just started to fall apart.  Things started to resolve pretty quickly without much detail.  The father was too evil.  The mother too unrealistic.  In the end I felt that people forgave too quickly without any details on WHY they decided to. 

I don't recommend this book.  Only because I feel like it could have been told better.  I know the moment when I realized this book wasn't going to be as good as it was when I first started reading it, so that was disappointing.  In an age where school shootings are a common occurrence, the author lost the chance to tell a story from a different perspective.

Stars: 3