Hate List by Jennifer Brown

What would you do if something you wrote caused people to die?  When Valerie’s boyfriend, Nick, begins shooting fellow classmates at their high school cafeteria, Valerie jumps into the line of fire to try to stop him.  She wakes up in the hospital to learn that not only is Nick dead, but he used her Hate List to choose his victims.  Valerie wrote the Hate List after years of being bullied and humiliated at school, never imagining that Nick would one day seek revenge on their bullies.  Now, with seven people dead and countless others wounded, Valerie must face her role in the shooting and try to begin her life again.  As she struggles for acceptance and forgiveness, Valerie learns that the road to recovery is never easy.  Can Valerie learn to forgive herself and her bullies?  Will people ever see her as anything but the author of the Hate List?

Set in modern America, this book examines the impacts of bullying on the lives of students, teachers, parents, and the community as everyone struggles to understand how and why this tragedy happened.  Told from the point-of-view of the shooter’s girlfriend, we begin to see how years of bullying take their toll, how no one is completely innocent or guilty, and how forgiveness is the only way to finally heal.  This book is highly recommended for young adults in a school or public library setting.

Awards

2010 YALSA's Best Book for Young Adults
2009 VOYA's Perfect Ten
2009 School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
2010 Michigan Library Association's Thumbs Up! Award
2012 Louisiana Teen Readers Choice Award
2012 Oklahoma Sequoyah Book Award

Learn More

Learn more about Jennifer Brown and her other books on her website.

Watch the book trailer for Hate List below:

A quote from the book:

“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.”

―Jennifer Brown, Hate List

Brown, Jennifer. Hate List. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009. Print.
9780316041447; Hardback; $17.00; 408 pages

Also available in paperback and ebook formats.