Title: Hate List
Author: Jennifer Brown
Genre: Young Adult/Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Summary:
Valerie Leftman’s junior year of high school didn’t end on the highest of notes — she lost her boyfriend, she lost hold of the few remaining strings tying her family together but most of all it seems she lost herself.
Formerly a “normal” girl with plenty of friends and more than her share of potential Valerie descends into the life of a social pariah when she meet and befriends Nick Levil. Gangly, awkward and equally inept in the ways of popularity and ascension into the upper echelons of high school society he is her perfect match. Bonding over their dysfunctional families, mutual contempt for Garvin’s in-crowd and a certain cadre of high school employees they feel persecute them the young friends fall in love. Initially their love is as innocent as most, lunching together at school, long hours on the phone, and spending every waking our outside the confines of Garvin with each other.
As part of that time they playfully create the hate list a seemingly benign collection of people, places and things they’d like to see fall off the face of the Earth. What Valerie, a girl so in love with her first boyfriend, fails to see is that her perception of the list is significantly different than Nick’s. Somewhere, over time, enough events have transpired to transform his intentions from foolish game playing list maker to high school vigilante when he walks into Garvin and opens fire on it’s inhabitents.
On that fateful day in early May, when the most unspeakable of violence strikes this affluent town’s High School Valerie is thrust into a life filled with second guessing, mistrust, and grand emotional upheaval. These issues not entirely new to her given the fact that she’s already been branded a social outcast and already consistently targeted for mockery and bullying she does find they have intensified as a result of Nick’s actions. Immediately branded a conspirator by some she struggles through recovery from both her own physical wounds as well as emotional as the lives of the students and community surrounding Garvin shift significantly.
Opinion:
Told entirely from Valerie’s point of view Hate List is a powerful, emotional and turbulent ride through recovery. We watch as Valerie relives the events of early May when the person she loved most in the world perpetrated the crimes she though they were only pretending to plan. We watch as she struggles through therapy to try and put the pieces of her shattered life (at school and at home) back together in some small way. We watch as she fights to remain in school despite the loathing and persecution of surviving classmates.
Valerie is the picture of a scared yet powerfully strong young lady. Having survived the unimaginable she perseveres through therapy where we quickly learn that in the end, despite all of the negativity and judgement she is indeed a hero. She’s shaped people’s lives (some for the good some for the worse) in a way, again in the end, that allows her presence at Garvin to be be one of positivity and inspiration. Brown wrote this struggle evenly and with great realism — allowing a certain cadre of characters to show their contempt for Valerie and her actions; to hold a grudge, while others embraced her heroism and worked diligently to help her understand that not only is she a good person but a person who stood in front of bullets and saved people’s lives.
My adoration for Hate List exceeds my ability to formulate coherent speech to describe it. There is honestly not one thing wrong I can find with this story. Well I take that back there is maybe one thing, Valerie’s father. By the end of the novel I wanted to jump into the pages and smack him upside the head. Despite this feeling I believe that Brown has crafted his characterization into a believably realistic picture of betrayal of the cruelest kind. His distrust and disbelief in Valerie is initially warranted but falls into the category of “be the adult in this relationship” or “put your big boy underpants on”. Having said that, it is this relationship that made me feel the most emotion. Particularly given his hypocrisy related to responsibility for one’s actions and trust worthiness. He really wasn’t one to judge in this story.
The thing of it is that this issue only goes to show how everything in Valerie’s life, both before and after the events with Nick at Garvin High occur, intertwines together to create the worst of circumstances. There is a strong foundation of dysfunction on which her reliance on Nick is built. Her shaky home life contributes to her virtual isolation at school and the ultimate creation of the hate list. Her dependence on Nick as her one good thing, her safe place pushes her life into complete disarray when he’s no longer there and she has no one else to fill that void. It is in this aspect where we see the most change in Valerie as she slowly moves from that place of isolation to navigate back into living and breathing society. One of the best elements of the novel is showing how people’s lives were completely changed by the events. Unsuspecting friends were made, forgiveness was given by some of those most harmed by Nick’s actions, and ultimately the school and community were able to work through the healing process while including Valerie.
On that note, I have to say that I really liked that Brown didn’t take the opportunity to make this story about gun control. Preaching to the reader about how things could change or how things are done wrong. There was no discussion of legalities or politics as it related to the issues of school violence and I appreciated the fact that this story was about the emotional aspects of such events.
I rarely rate a novel I read because of the subjectivity of it all but in the case of Hate List I’m going to step outside that general rule and give it five stars. It was one of the most phenomenal reads of the year and one that I’ll likely go back to several times. Further, I would advocate that this book be included in every required reading list in every school system in the country. It delicately and realistically handles the issue of school violence but more importantly it handles the emotional aftermath with such dignity and grace that despite what a reader initially believes Valerie’s role was in the shootings by the end they sympathize for her and root for her success as she struggles through.
As I end this review I strongly encourage (hell I’d demand if I thought it would work) to read this novel! Read it once, twice, three times. Read it then pass it on to everyone you know to read it. Stand up to your school boards and tell them to read it too! I think we’d be hard pressed to find a single person who would be sorry they had.
[This review is part of a blog tour arranged by Traveling to Teens]
O.M.G.!!
we? I know I added more than my fair share of blogs to my feed reader and boy, oh boy, do I have a lot to wade through there. I’m still working on commenting to posts!
A really cool event has been brought to my attention that I want to be sure to pass on to everyone!
