Hate List

By: Jennifer Brown
Location: FIC BRO
Genre: Realistic Youth Fiction- School Shootings!

Would I love my son no matter what he did?  Yes I would!!


Of course Ma would have wanted Nick remembered as a "Beloved Son." Of course she'd do it in the most laid-back way possible - whispering it to him in tiny letters on his headstone. 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.

This Mother had to deal with a son who opened fire in a school cafeteria, killing those on the "Hate List". A hate list  constructed and written by the bullied  to the bullies.
Protagonist Valerie is suffering the loss of her boyfriend, Nick, a guy she's been with for three years. Nick shot himself after bringing a gun to school and shooting several people, and her (accidentally? no one will ever know), and then himself. Valerie had begun a "Hate List" in junior high, to vent her feelings about being bullied, and once she's with Nick, he works on it with her. They add names with each humiliation they suffer - whether real or imagined. You feel their pain and helplessness in the face of people who rule the social ladder, as well as their attachment to each other.. Schools can be such vicious painful experiences that demean and destroy you- unless you destroy them first.