My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jennifer Brown’s Hate List is not just for teens. I would highly recommend this book to parents of any teens who have suffered a traumatic loss or have been through a tragedy.
While Valerie survives being shot by her boyfriend, who has opened fire at school before turning the gun on himself to commit suicide, she still has to deal with the aftermath of losing her best friend and boyfriend, the guilt of still being alive when so many others are dead, and also all the accusations that she must have been in on his plan. It’s hard not to accuse Val of instigating the attack. She and Nick kept the Hate List, a book with the names of people (adults and peers) who bullied them or did them wrong in some way. Their classmates were, in fact, pretty evil to them, and maybe they just needed a place to vent. At least, that’s what Val thought the Hate List was. Nick took it way beyond venting with words.
I would urge parents to read this because we aren’t always equipped with the right words or methods to deal with something this tragic. At times, I thought Val’s healing would have progressed a lot sooner and with greater success had her parents just gotten out of her way, or did a better job of trying to understand how she felt. I’ve never been in this situation, and I hope I never will, but having read this book, I think I’d do a better job of listening to my kids and trying to support them.
Hate List makes me think of the message in Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. In 13RW, Hannah Baker commits suicide after a series of events that snowball into a life she cannot bear. While I read 13RW, there was a persistent message that anything and everything you do has a consequence and you never know what that consequence will be. Jay Asher writes, “Everything affects everything.” In both books, the tragedies could have been avoided had the people in their lives taken that into consideration. Sure, kids will be kids. But kids should be prepared for the consequences of their words and actions. On a side note, according to Entertainment Weekly, who just interviewed Asher, Selena Gomez approached him about turning Thirteen Reasons Why into a movie. This is something I found on YouTube. Check it out.
