Review : Hate List

Posted by kay on March 2, 2010 3:08 am in 4 stars reads | 8 comments

Hate List by Jennifer Brown
Pages : 405
Genre : YA
Stand Alone
My Rating :

From the Back of the Book :

Five months ago, Valerie Leftman’s boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets.

Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life.

Hate List was the kind of book I could only fully appreciate once I had read the last page of it. The topic was difficult : school shootings are terrible, but they’re also very public events. Therefore, everyone has an opinion on the “why” and “how”, a judgement on who’s to blame, an idea of what was really going on in the shooter’s mind. Brown depicts those tensions very realistically in her debut novel, creating characters that were both complex and interesting.

I’ll admit that for the first half of the book, even though I could appreciate Brown’s writing, I didn’t think the book was as “emotional” and “riveting” as some readers had described it. The more I read though, the more I understood why so many had read and loved it. As I got to know more about Valerie, her family and other students of her school, I got more invested into the story. The writing was good, not overdone, which let more place for Valerie’s narration to develop, and I like that the author dealt with the consequences in a realistic way. Things are very difficult for Valerie and her family, as well as with the other kids in school, but in the end, there is also some hope and redemption.

I think the book was, in fact, a little slow in the beginning, and could have benefit from more fleshed out secondary characters. All in all though, Hate List’s story was a very good look on a difficult topic. It’s certainly a book that would be good for book clubs and such : with characters that are neither black nor white, before AND after the event, there is a lot to talk about. The topic is also very actual, and the way Brown wrote the story prompts the reader to question rather than judging the characters and their motives.

In the end, my reaction to Hate List was similar to my reaction to The Adoration of Jenna Fox : I wasn’t blown away from the start, but I grew to enjoy the books and think they are must-read.