The Hate List deals with the aftermath of this reign of terror from the point of view of a close friend of the shooter. But the book is so much more than that. It touches on so many issues: the impact on children of parents who dont get along, the fact that adults dont listen to each other, let alone teenagers, the impact of bullying which is denied by school officials.
Brown shows how school administrators might put a positive spin on the aftermath of a school shooting, stating that the children have learned love and forgiveness, when indeed, nothing has changed. Brown as has tackled a difficult subject in a moving and tender way.
Nick had no one to talk to about his issues except Valerie, who was powerless and unaware that his feelings ran so deep. Her life after the shooting changed in so many ways. The Hate List is a must read book. I look forward to more works by Ms.
Ed Goldberg Top 50 Reviewer reviews. User reviews 2 reviews. Already have an account? Log in now or Create an account. The human side of school shootings. March 25, Even in her debut novel, her talent shows itself consistently, and the emotional bond the reader forges with Valerie Leftman is intense and heartfelt. Hate List is about how a woman grows and comes to terms with who she was, who she is now, and who she wants to be.
This book is about a school in the aftermath of tragedy, and also a family too broken to pretend everything is okay anymore. One of the beautiful things about Hate List is the way it causes you to examine and understand all sides of the issue.
Jennifer Brown covered everyone, and she did in in a way that in no way criminalized or sermonized as to who was right and who was wrong. Jennifer Brown did not give her protagonist perfect parents, nor were they affected with Disappearing Parent Syndrome. Her mom worked through it and attempted to do better; her dad threw in the towel and left, saying he could never forgive Valerie for what she did. Everyone in the Leftman family struggled, not just Valerie.
Those are small potatoes, though. Renae M Top 50 Reviewer reviews. What would you do? January 18, Reader reviewed by sdaugherty Good book.
Another school shooting book but this one is more in depth of the inside of the survivors. One of which is the girlfriend of the shooter and what she goes through to get her life back on track. Always accused with just cause of being the catalyst behind the shooting by sharing a "hate list" with her boyfriend but unaware that he would take it to the next level. Her group of friends are afraid to be associated with her. Valerie is a very sympathetic character. It's easy to relate to her, to feel her pain, her guilt, her loneliness and her anger.
Everybody hates sometimes, and it is extremely heartbreaking to see her private hatred dragged out for the world to see and to judge. It made me so angry that she was being blamed for writing down the names of those who made her life hell. And, through her, Nick is not merely an evil boy with a gun.
He becomes a human being full of pain and sadness, sick of being kicked into the dirt and treated like shit just for being different. This book breaks down the barriers between victim and villain, between the average teenager and one capable of doing something so horrific. Whenever school shootings happen, people always look for an answer to those same questions: what makes this kid different from everyone else?
Do they have some innate propensity to kill? How am I different? Oh god, am I that different? And I think this book really looks at that, humanizing everyone and offering an understanding of their individual situations and motivations. It was very powerful and never once stopped making me feel something - sad, angry, frustrated, concerned, and hopeful.
View all 52 comments. Wow, this book was smart. It really delved into the aftermath of trauma from so many angles, ones that make you mad as a reader, and ones that make you hopeful. The writing itself changed and matured throughout the book, which was a bit jarring, but the subject matter is important and handled well in my opinion. View all 4 comments. After sitting on my thoughts for a day, I feel like I can't review this book with any sort of polished thought process, so I'm just going to let my fingers type out whatever comes to mind.
I think this book probably deserves a 4 star plus rating because it is a story worth telling and a story worth reading, but a few things held me back from going higher. The timing was off for me. Given that my state has been rocked by several shootings over the past several years the most recent 3.
Given that my state has been rocked by several shootings over the past several years the most recent being the movie theater one; the most upsetting for me personally being the one that happened in my town not long ago at a church we've participated in activities at , I think my mind was having a hard time processing the fact that I was reading this book as fiction , for the sake of entertainment.
I might have been better off picking up a real account, such as Columbine instead. I'm not saying that Hate List trivialized the severity of the subject for the purpose of cheap thrills.
I've used the word "entertainment" very lightly in this regard. The subject matter was absolutely handled with the utmost of respect. Books like this should be required reading for kids around the middle school age range. Kids need to be told over and over just how bad bullying is. This book managed to show many perspectives on a school shooting, but the one perspective that stood out to me the most was how one person felt like if they'd been a little kinder, there might have been a chance that the entire chain reaction of events might not have been triggered.
ONE person out of the many bullies tormenting the offender might have been able to prevent something so horrendous from happening. Most of the book felt cold to me. I can't explain why I felt detached, but I was.
It wasn't until the very last section that everything hit me in a big way it appears that a few other friends thought the same thing , and then I started to cry.
The book was worth reading just for the way I felt about the last section, but there was something about the setup which felt sterile to me. Maybe that was the point, who knows I appreciated that both of the parties directly and indirectly involved with the shootings were shown as feeling, thinking, human beings. Too often, we fail to look at the person committing the crime and wonder how they got to such a place that would make them want to hurt other people.
This passage near the end of the book made me lose it I'm not going to consider it a spoiler that you'll figure out the shooter killed himself because that happens a good portion of the time with these types of crimes, so it's something the majority of us would probably assume to be something that would happen : Of course Ma would have wanted Nick remembered as a "Beloved Son. Just a whisper. You were beloved, son. You were my beloved. Even after all of this, I still remember the beloved you.
I can't forget. Even the worst person on earth might still have someone there, remembering them after they are gone - remembering not only the bad, but also the good, the part of that person worth loving. Just typing that out had me fighting back tears. Maybe if Nick had realized just how loved he was, he wouldn't have felt the need to kill those on the "hate list," those people who bullied him.
I guess we'll never know. View all 27 comments. Shelves: favorites. A criminal is rejected and punished by the society to justify the victims. The question arises when a criminal is a victim of the society.
This book deals with the aftermath of a school shooting. Whenever we watch a news channel, we don't realise how deeply any incident affects the people related to it. This book shows us different sides of a crime, a criminal and the society to emphasise that not everything can be categorised as good or bad.
Valerie returns back to her school after her boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on the school cafeteria resulting the deaths and the injuries of the students. She is implicated to the killing as she was involved with Nick to create the Hate List which Nick used to pick his targets. Even though she saved the life of her fellow classmate, she is blamed by everyone including her own family for being part of the shooting. The best thing is that the book neither superficial nor depressing.
It deals with the hardest stuff without making it overwhelming, preachy and judgemental. Valerie is a pessimistic, complex and a tad whiny character but considering what she went through, I think anyone who'd be in her shoes would've done the same. Her transformation is complex which gives an unfeigned edge to the book. We can't agree with Nick's actions but at the same time, we feel sad for him because of his vulnerability.
The author tried her best to show that everyone isn't the stereotypical characters as we assume them to be. I couldn't connect to the book as much I wanted to. Jeremy wasn't included in the rest of the book even though he was one of the characters who influenced Nick negatively.
Overall, it's one of the powerful book with a beautiful story. View all 23 comments. I was very intimidated by this book at first, since a my mom thought it was "too dark for me" even though there was literally a school shooting two towns over and b it was the first book I checked out from my library's Young Adult section way back before seventh grade.
I read it anyway. It goes into mental health, grief, guilt, bullying and toxic relationships. The plot follows Valerie Leftman going into her senior year of high school after her ex-boyfriend, Nick, shot and killed multiple people and then himself at their school, choosing targets from the notebook that they shared.
It was a list of all the people and things they hated. After spending the summer alone and trying to recuperate, she has to face the trauma of being shot and witnessing the shooting, and the people who know she was involved. And they hated him back. Punches in the chest. Snide comments. Being shoved into the lockers when some idiot with an attitude walked by.
They hated him and he hated them and somehow it ended up this way, with everyone gone. Valerie started it. But she thought it was just a coping thing for them, not something that Nick would actually take seriously. However, Valerie was also the one who stopped the shooting, and got shot in the leg in the process. The character conflict was so so amazing. But you also get her anger and frustration. It's agonizing and deep. Valerie was such a complex character, and I could really empathize with her emotions and thoughts.
Her personality was so real and understandable. Hieler was amazing. I loved her. She was basically the definition of an eccentric-artist type of character, and she delivered on both counts. Bea was the light point in this book, out of a traumatized cast of characters. Some days making it to the end of the day is quite the victory. It delivered imagery, emotion and perspective so well. Spills are usually ugly and messy, not beautiful.
I am a sucker for books that make me miserable in the best way, and Hate List did that. The chaos of the shooting was conveyed so well that I felt disoriented and terrified. The grief hit me in the face repeatedly. The guilt made me hurt. The messages that this book carried were so raw and real, and the sad thing is that everything about this book - the characters, the events, the pain and the themes - all apply today, twelve years after the book was written. People hate and are hated and carry grudges and want punishments.
There were so many low points and toxic relationships and moments that just made me want to scream and punch something. But that was realistic, too. The way things fell apart on the page was exactly the way it made me feel.
In a way, Nick had been right: We all got to be winners sometimes. The preconceived stereotypes of classmates and the way people will automatically label others was a strong influence in this book. She was a pretty girl.
Like a thing of the past, you know? It's something to cry about and scream over and curl up in the corner because it's so true and so real and so wrong that it physically and spiritually aches.
View all 3 comments. Jun 27, Faye, la Patata rated it did not like it. What a disappointing book. I'm so mad. Whiny heroine, whiny parents, whiny brother, whiny friends. I just can't stand it. And why is she trying to force the idea that Nick was still a good guy even if he shot and killed several people?
Don't fucking make excuses for him. I mean seriously, the dad threatened to disown the girl! The mom told her outright that she ruined her life for simply loving the wrong guy. She wasn't even the criminal and yet her family treats her like one. What kind What a disappointing book. What kind of parents are these? And the heroine didn't report them to the police or to a social worker or something, to how they are treating her?
If my parents acted like this, I'd be running away. Nobody deserves that kind of crap, especially from people who should automatically be by your side through thick and thin. I couldn't believe how extreme they were written. Not cool. I was very uncomfortable. Aside from that, the constant wallowing in self-pity was too exhausting.
Not recommending this. View all 32 comments. Aug 27, Kristi rated it it was amazing. The story initially jumps between the actual shooting in May and then following September when, Valerie is preparing to head back to school. Then it focuses on Valerie's senior year and the after math of the shooting itself. It's also laced with newspaper articles throughout the first half or so.
These aspects really added a certain dynamic to the novel, and made it one that particularly stands out in my mind. The narrative of this novel is so very compelling. It's definitely more of a character driven novel than plot driven, but for this particular situation it works really well.
Valerie's guilt is depicted in a very realistic way, her struggle with her own identity, and her struggle to truly understand her feelings for Nick. It's just heartbreaking. This is definitely a topic that needs to be discussed and explored.
A fantastically written, character driven novel, that you will not soon forget. I thought I had read it as a teenager, but it seems like I actually read it for the first time in my early twenties.
Even so, I'm still including it on the list of my rereading project , which consists of books I loved when I was a young woman that I'm checking out again as a full grown adult.
She's also the girlfriend of the shooter, who killed himself after shooting several of their classmates and teachers dead. Valerie stopped the bullet from hitting one of her enemies, Jessica, before she was shot herself and is grappling with survivor's guilt Because the people Nick killed came from a notebook she kept called the Hate List, which is where she kept a log of all the people who bullied her and her boyfriend.
I know that some people are going to take issue with this book for the premise alone, which is about the perspective of a shooting from someone who is partially responsible or is perceived to be that way. But Valerie didn't wield the gun and she didn't know what her boyfriend was going to do, and plenty of us have said things about others in private or among friends "oh, I could just KILL her" that could make us look guilty if that person suddenly dropped dead.
Her relationship with Nick was toxic and their depression became the bond between the two of them, and even though Valerie could sense him drifting away and going down a darker path, she didn't necessarily realize just how violent that path would become.
Valerie's story is a story of healing as she comes to terms with her own guilt and also that her boyfriend did a truly horrible thing. It's about putting a human face to the violence that occurs on both sides of a shooting, which I don't think a lot of people do, and addresses a lot of different subjects in a complex and interesting way. Valerie's family dynamic was heartbreaking and shows how parents can sometimes struggle to reconcile their own desires with what is best for their kids.
The bullying Nick and Valerie received at school was actually pretty similar to what I faced in high school myself, and I, too, was depressed and filled with powerless fury over it.
The aftermath and the students' reactions-- both to what happened and also to Valerie, once she makes the choice to return-- felt very realistic. I also liked that therapy played such a prevalent and positive role in the book and in Valerie's recovery.
This was just a really great, really emotional, really real book-- and I really enjoyed it. And yes, the ending made me tear up. View all 8 comments. Dec 02, Sandra rated it liked it. It goes something like this: All the other kids with the pumped up kicks, You better run, better run, outrun my gun. All the other kids with the pumped up kicks, You better run, better run, faster than my bullet. Nick was not a violent person. He was a hopeless romantic.
But what pushed Nick to kill those students? I felt for them though. Nick and Valerie were one of the bullied ones. Valerie showed Nick her hate list and it became some sort of their favorite pastime, bully-bashing behind their back. Then one day, Nick came to school with a gun and killed the people on the list along with others unsuspecting students. She stopped him but still people talked. They all think she had something to do with it, including her parent which sucks!
The Hate List was one of those books that would open your eyes to the reality of life. It was emotional and very real. The book actually started after the incidents with little snippets of news about what happened during the shooting. I was just a little disappointed that the characters lack back stories. It was as if there was no other characters there than Valerie.
Everything focused on her. I wanted to know more about Nick and what really pushed him to the edge. They were completely unfair. They should have understood what she was going through not the other way. They suck at parenting. They let down their own daughter. They should have believed her because she is their daughter.
I felt sympathy for Val and Nick. They were victims here too just like the people Nick killed. I am not saying that what Nick did was correct but what those bullies did to him was not correct either. Not much about Nick was showed her which upset me a bit. I wanted to know more about him. Anyways, it was a good attempt. It was very light despite the sensitivity of the topic. It was depressing yes but what can I say, it happens. Bullying happens. There are a lot of unloving parents out there too.
I think the main lesson of this book is to respect one another. We have to respect other people even if they are inferior to you.
There was this line from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that I love so much and I think it would fit the moral lesson of the story. I give this book 3. View all 7 comments. People do it all the time— assume that they know what's going on in someone else's head.
That impossible. And to think it's possible is a really big mistake. The Hate List is about perception - how we can look at someone and see them as all bad or all good when they have tons beneath. Valerie perceived her boyfriend, Nick, as good — before he shot up their school. And everyone sees Valerie as bad, except for Jessica, the girl whose life Valerie saved. In fact, as the author says herself, this book isn't about school shootings and trending topics.
I'll bet if you asked ten readers what Hate List was about, they'd say a school shooting. But for me, Hate List was never about a school shooting. This was always Valerie's story. She feels guilty for her role in what happened, however small, but she's not perfect. She still hates some of these people and she misses the one guy who made her feel happy, even though he was a monster.
Her character arc is one of the most solid I've read in contemporary fiction. I also want to give this book a shoutout for a great representation of ptsd and an actually helpful counselor, which - at the point I read this book - I literally think I had never seen in a book before.
As someone who sees a therapist, and has an excellent relationship with said therapist especially now, with a new one I think it's important to show audiences that therapy, with the right person, is actually a deeply positive thing. Jessica and Valerie's relationship is maybe my favorite part of this entire book. The focus on platonic friendship as a way of healing rather than a romantic relationship really improved this book. So many books feel the need to insert a guy who can "teach the girl to love again", and in this case, I loved that Val just needed a friend.
Definitely recommended. View 1 comment. Shelves: read-in , contemporary , standalone , young-adult. Five months since that tragic day. That day when Nick decides to open fire on his school cafeteria killing those who were on the Hate List.
That list, which was written by him and his girlfriend Valerie, classified all those that used to torment them both during the school day. Students, bullies, teachers, popular kids After spending months in the hospital, where she is treated like a potential suspect and being sent to a psychological unit, she is finally sent home to rest and heal. It's now time to return to school to complete her senior year, Valerie realizes that her worst wounds are not physical.
She will need to face hate, judgment and guilt. I really loved how this book was written. I enjoyed both the writing style and the way both the past and the present were alternating. It's a subject that really touches me and I loved how it was handled. It wasn't only about victims and culprits.
The Hate List was so layered and so deep, I recommend it to any reader. Mild spoilers beyond this point : This book circles about perceptions. How to Valerie, the Hate List was a way to release herself as to Nick it was a list of potential targets. How they were both angry but that in the end, they didn't have the same perception of boundaries.
Their perception of limits and retribution weren't on the same scale. And it was what amazed me the most. I think it was also what despaired Valerie the most and what made her denial so hard to overcome. How two persons that close, always talking, sending texts and email to each other all night long, could be such strangers to one another? How could Valerie hadn't seen nor guessed what was happening in Nick's mind? She was so lost that she ended up isolating herself.
She pushed away anyone that came to her, to help her. She rejected her family, her former friends and even classmates. I think that the fact that Nick killed himself made things worse for Valerie. She blamed herself for not seeing it coming. She was angry at everyone including herself. It wasn't really about self-pitying, but more about the fact that she learned that the person she loved the most was a complete stranger and she couldn't ask for an explanation.
She needed something, anything from him; a justification, an apology, or even a proof that she couldn't have known. Her whole world collapsed and she lost faith and trust toward her friends and family. To have known better, and to have had some more insight into the slippery slope Nick was caught in. She has an amazing therapist, who is basically the only person she trusts, he helps her dealing with her feelings, her guilt and her depression , to go through the day.
To my opinion, when she started to go back to school, it was the beginning of the "going better process". Even though it was really hard for her to be confronted with the school situation, I think she was less dwelling on her misery.
However, I understand how difficult it must have been for her to be stared and the object of murmurs and resentment. The process of acceptance is gradual and well brought. The main being about seeking forgiveness. Our closes ones' as well as our own. The more I read, the more I realized that the most important was not the absolution of those she wronged, but her own acceptance and mercy for herself.
To accept that everyone deals with death and loss his or her own way and that it's okay to be mad, it's okay to still love , it's okay to stretch your hand to yesterday's foe and make him your friend. Shelves: read , reviewed , ebook , young-adult , onleihe , year If you are a student, then it is highly likely that you know about the constant fear of someone running on a killing spree in your school building or your university.
If not, then at least you probably have relatives or friends who could potentially be involved in such a tragedy, just as everyone can possibly become a victim to such a horrifying scenario. That's what this book is about: the way an entire school deals with a killing spree after Nick Levil opened fire in the school cafeteria, kill If you are a student, then it is highly likely that you know about the constant fear of someone running on a killing spree in your school building or your university.
That's what this book is about: the way an entire school deals with a killing spree after Nick Levil opened fire in the school cafeteria, killing several students and himself. I am not that well-informed about the circumstances in different countries, but here in Germany, tragedies like these have accompanied people for years, especially after the well-known and widely dreaded shooting sprees of Erfurt , Emsdetten and Winnenden Emergency plans are now hanging on the doors of each classroom and instructions are given how to behave in such a case at the beginning of every schoolyear.
But past events and the severe lack of security measures tell another story: that it would be easy for almost everyone to walk into a classroom or a lecture hall and kill at least ten people by random before someone can stop the killer.
This is something which can never be truly predicted or prevented, not even with huge prevention activites which, of course, cannot be found here at the moment. And this fear or becoming victim to such a tragedy as well as the aftermaths of it are what Hate List by Jennifer Brown deals with.
Killing sprees are a serious topic which now and then invades the headlines and causes serious upheaval among the population. What makes it such a fascinating topic for an author to explore? It's the way they can't be predicted. Which thoughts have to run through the mind of a young person before walking through his or her school and killing dozens of people?
How can such a deed be motivated? Why is it that nobody, not the parents, nor the friends, nor the girlfriend, ever sensed that something could happen? In this book, Valerie Leftman, the first-person narrator, is introduced as the girlfriend of the boy who killed those innocent people. While in their relationship, Nick was sweet, loving and caring, even though Valerie knew that he had some contacts to the wrong friends.
In addition to that, Nick and Valerie, both considering themselves to be outsiders in their school, created a Hate List with the names of people they hate. And when Nick begins the shooting, those persons whose names appear on that list are chosen by him explicitly to be killed before finally he can be stopped, leading him to kill himself. When the book begins, five months have passed, and Valerie has to return to her school again. Everyone considers her to be the girlfriend of that killer, some even accuse her of having known about his plans, and nothing is going to make it easy for Valerie at her school.
The social issue weighed heavily into this book, but apart from that, Valerie felt like a typical seventeen-year-old teenager to me, portrayed with almost the same character traits as all the other seventeen-year-old female protagonists in all those Young Adult novels out there. Her character had nothing special surrounding her, except for the constant self-pitying and selfishness. Her father was portrayed in a way which could not have been more negative, a way which is sadly too often occuring in reality.
Her mother was portrayed in a way mothers shouldn't be portrayed, and the only character who sticked out to me as being interesting was Nick Levil, the perpetrator, for the mere fact that nobody suspected anything before he went on his killing spree. The most enthralling part of this novel was the way the author dealt with Nick's complicated mind; after all, what could turn a guy who reads Shakespeare for fun and has a relatively healthy social life into a killer?
In the end, the premise convinced me most in this novel, while the characters fell flat for me and the plot balanced on a constant middle course between boring and interesting. However, it is possible that this novel was just a case of "it's me, not you", so I will recommend reading Anne's fantastic review and let yourself be convinced that this book deserves to be checked out.
View all 17 comments. Aug 02, Anne rated it really liked it. Oh, don't roll your eyes. He IS wise! That's our reality. People hate and are hated and carry grudges and want punishments I don't know if it's possible to take hate away from people.
Not even people like us, who've seen firsthand what hate can do. We're all hurting. We're all going to be hurting for a long time. And we, probably more than anyone else out there, will be searching for a new reality every day.
A better one But in order to change reality you have to be willing to listen and to learn. And to hear. To actually hear. Five months ago, Valerie Leftman was implicated in a tragic event that occurred in her high school's cafeteria. Now she has to return to those same halls and people who blame her for the crime which was committed, because Valerie's hate list was what prompted the high school shooting that marked a great change in the lives of the people of her hometown. Hate List is very nearly an excellent piece of work that dares to be honest, sensitive and consequential in it's themes.
The story is told in present chapters, news reports and articles, flashbacks which take us through Valerie's memories of the day of the shooting, and the days before. I think this book changed me a bit. Sometimes when I read a story, no matter how invested I am, no matter how integrated I am into it, I imagine the story world is a glass globe, and I'm standing on the outside looking in.
They say onlookers see much more than the players. I'm the onlooker, I should have aspired to more insight. But I didn't. I simply couldn't. And I swear I felt bamboozled and was very frustrated, like I was cheated out of my advantage and rightful privilege.
I won't lie BUT I've thought about the realities of this story and I still can't for the life of me understand the science behind them all.
But I like this, this state of confutation is magnificent. It shouldn't be easy to assign blame, close the case and call it a day. It's wrong if it's that easy. It's wrong and inadequate. Many times I was angry at how thorough Brown was in exploring and communicating the feelings of the characters because I had no excuse to be lazy in my perceptions.
Jennifer Brown's critically acclaimed novel now includes the bonus novella Say Something , another arresting Hate List story. Lost - by Natasha Preston Paperback. The Natasha Preston Collection - Paperback.
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