It’s Mississippi in the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas “32” Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county—and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town. More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they’ve buried and ignored for decades.
I grew up in Minnesota where the Mississippi River flows. I remember spelling Mississippi in grade school,
“M – I – Crooked letter – Crooked Letter – I – Crooked Letter – Crooked Letter – I – P – P – I.
It’s just the way we rolled back then. 😀
Crooked Letter Crooked Letter was everything I had anticipated it to be. It was a mystery… but not an over the top creep me out mystery, but a good solid mystery surrounding a small town… a missing girl… and a quiet book-worm of a man who the town has their eye on as he seems a bit… odd.
Let me say that not every author call pull off a smooth read that pops from the present to the past, but Tom Franklin does so beautifully. It was a pleasure to read this in so many ways – not only the story itself, but really there is something to say for a book written well and Tom Franklin hit home with this one.
I love fully developed characters and books that make it hard for me to put down and that is what I found here. If you are looking for a wonderfully written mystery this year, I would highly suggest you grab a copy of Crooked Letter Crooked Letter.
When a person dressed up in a rabbit costume coaxed a little girl out of her car and into his, the lone witness, Rhonda, who is on her way to a job interview, is too stunned to act. As the small rural town mobilizes a search for the missing child, Rhonda, reeling with guilt from her inaction, is reminded of another girl who went missing—her closest friend from childhood, Lizzy. Joyful memories of their youth spent putting on plays and exploring the woods alternate with darker moments: losing the love of her life, Lizzy’s brother, Peter, and the year an increasingly disheveled and moody Lizzy stopped talking to her or anyone else. Past and present merge as Rhonda closes in on the costumed abductor and also on the dark family secrets that tore their perfect childhood apart.
Last week I reviewed Promise Not To Tell, also by this author. I found The Island Of Lost Girls to have many similarities, both books are around a childhood crime and flashbacks to that time of childhood – to the present situation.
Jennifer Mcmahon builds a strong story that much like Promise Not To Tell… kept me guessing. I found the story line good and the whole dude in a rabbit costume creepy. There are a few times that the rabbit speaks his thoughts and that was chilling…. I think that really held me as I wanted to know who the rabbit was…. really bad.
I liked Rhonda, she was a well-developed character and I liked that she helped the investigation after being the sole witness to the crime. I also enjoyed the unveiling of the two crimes.
All said and done, it was a delicious (if not a wee bit creepy) mystery which really, between the two books in a week, fed that mystery craving I have been having lately.
Love a good mystery? Jennifer Mcmahon is an author to watch.
I received this book for review from TLC Book Tours
Five-year-old Jack and his Ma live and eat and play and sleep in one room–an 11×11-foot space that is Jack’s world… and Ma’s prison. Ma was abducted at the age of 19 by Old Nick 7 years ago. 5 years ago, Jack was born. All Jack knows of the world is in ROOM. He has never seen sky, grass, a dog, a store…. he knows TABLE, BED, SPOON, RUG, WARDROBE, TV… and everything that has been in the room since he was born. Jack is very satisfied with what he believes to be a normal life…. but each day brings Ma to another level of how is she going to get free and save her son who does not know he needs saving?
Last September I read and reviewed ROOM. At the time of that reading I was really impressed with this book. As time went on, I found the book really stuck with me and that …. made it all the more impressive.
Last month, my book club the AWESOME Bookies, chose ROOM to be our book club read for May, and last night we had our potluck around the book and discussion.
Much of what we discussed in the book could be considered spoilerish to someone who has not read the book so I am going to make a spoiler page (my second one for ROOM) to allow those who have read the book to go to and see what was discussed.
Now – for those of you who have not read the book, this is my advice for you. Read it. I recommend it. I have heard many of you say that you don’t think you could handle the book, but seriously – the book is pretty tame. Yes Ma was abducted. Yes Jack is a result of that abduction. BUT note this – all that is pre-ROOM. When ROOM opens, Jack is five and ROOM is told entirely from Jack’s perspective. Things are not going to get too crazy when a five-year old is telling the story. And that too is brilliant of Emma Donoghue…. what could have been a harsh hard book is told by hmmm…. let’s say, Ma, is mellowed and innocent as told by Jack.
The Bookies overall ratings were mixed. We are on a scale of 1 – 5 (5 the best) and most came in around 4 and 4.5… a few around 3. Angie and I, who had both read this book before encouraged them to sit on their thoughts of the book for a while. We both agreed that after reading, we found we even liked it more.
Oh…. and anytime we have a home meeting for Bookies, there is food. I LOVE planning food around our book reviews… our group is so creative, and here is what we had last night in celebration of ROOM:
People who have read the book will understand this.... I actually didn't get too many groans at book club when i came up with this one. 🙂Tortilla soupPasta was a staple for Ma and JackYummy fruit punchWouldnt you ask for this for "Sunday Treat?"Ahhhh.... this one speaks for itself. 🙂
“When I seen this bookish adventure for Fairy Tale Fortnight coming up hosted by Misty at The Book Rat and Ashley from Basically Amazing Books, lets just say my “spidey senses”…. were activated…
I had not read any of the “New” fairy tales but have many fond memories of fairy tales as a child…”
Sheila
So you start with a teenage boy named Johnny who works at his mothers shoe repair shop in a pretty sweet hotel in South Beach, Florida. In years past his relatives were called cobblers, but now… well that just sounds like a dessert.
Johnny spends his free time hanging out with his BFF Meg and dreaming of designing his own shoe line that will bring in so much moolahthat his mom will no longer have to fret over keeping the electricity bill paid up and deciding between food for dinner or the rent on their home.
Then one day a famous Princess shows up at the hotel and she is too gorgeous for words. Johnny can not help be drawn to her and in a chance meeting the Princess shares with Johnny a story that is so unreal it has to be true, of her brother the prince being kidnapped and turned into a frog (maybe that is frognapped). Johnny takes on the role of “rescuer” when the Princess offers him a large sum of cash as well as her hand in marriage if he succeeds in bringing her brother back to his former self. For Johnny, this could be an answer to all their money issues as well as marrying the Princess? How is this not a win win?
Yet all is not as easy as the newly appointed frog catcher would think for many evil forces are at hand to stop Johnny on his quest…. such as witches and giants, and six enchanted swans, a talking rat and a talking fox…. and each new character Johnny meets seems to have an agenda of their own and his one task turns into many….
and in the end as Johnny works through all the hoops to get to his dreams… he really has to rethink his dreams and what he really wants is not what he thought at all…
My adventure forward into this fairy tale was interesting. It was not a “pick up and love it from page one” style read for me. It took a while for me to warm up to our young Johnny and the wild craziness of talking animals, a magic cape – of course – ALL MAGIC CAPES appeal to me….( seriously, who wouldn’t want one of these!), a crazed killer teen and a witch for a mother, giants, and of course… smoking hot looking shoes…..
yet as I committed myself to experiencing this book, the more I read – the less it felt like a commitment and it became actually fun. Silly fun yes, but fun all the same. I enjoyed the beginning of each chapter as it gave a little quote that was from an old fairy tale and then the chapter actually tied in with the quote…. brilliant. Really brilliant.
As long as the shoemaker lived all went well with him, and all of his undertakings prospered.
In the fall of 2002, 41-year-old Kate Cypher, a divorced Seattle school nurse, returns to New Hope, the decaying Vermont hippie commune where she grew up, to visit her elderly mother, Jean, who’s suffering from Alzheimer’s. Kate has avoided New Hope since the grizzly, unsolved murder of her fifth-grade friend, Del Griswold, 31 years earlier. Kate fears she betrayed Del, a free-spirited farm girl. Did her betrayal cause Del’s death? Who killed Del? Another local girl is murdered in a similar manner at the time of Kate’s return. Could the killer be loose again? Meanwhile, Jean appears to be possessed with Del’s spirit and may have the answers to these questions. As Kate investigates, she learns stunning truths about many events and people from her youth.
What’s the worst thing you have ever done?
I was drawn to this book for a few reasons. One…. The obvious one. The cover. Look at that. Who is she? What has she done? Is she survivor or victim? Two… the synopsis about a girl who was called “Potato Girl”, uggghhh…. name calling that rile me up…. this falls into my category of “words are powerful, they can hurt and knock you down just as well as they can lift you up. Three… The author Jennifer McMahon, I had heard the buzz about her style and her writing and I wanted to give her a try.
While this a good ghost story and mystery wrapped into one, I found it to be more than that. This book is about a friendship. A heartbreaking and tragic friendship that caused me pause to read and be reminded once again how our words do affect others.
The beauty of this book was that I thought I knew who did it and I was wrong. And then I had a back up idea of who did it and well… that wasnt exactly right either…. however….
OOPS! 😉 That’s all you get.
I enjoyed my first read with Jennifer McMahon and next week I will have the opportunity to explore her again when I read The Island Of Lost Girls for another tour.
I received this book for review from TLC Book Tours
When tragedy strikes as we see all over our world it is a question that plagues all walks of faith. How does belief matter in those who suffer? Phillip Yancey takes us within these pages to the aftermath of the Virginia Tech school shooting to impoverish communities to a convention for former prostitutes – who prefer to be called former sex workers.
His travels open up opportunities to see God in ordinary people, sometimes bruised and battered, but time and again there is a spirit of faith and hope that is humbling.
This book was read as part of our Faith N Fiction group. I come into this read a little bias as I have enjoyed Yancey’s writing in the past and even taught a class for two years based off his book What’s So Amazing About Grace? Yancey likes to take a topic, and break it down into bite size pieces for us, many times in story form of real people in real situations and that is what he did here.
Any one of us can recall something during our life time either personal, or globally astronomical that would make the strongest of faith question, “How can God be in the midst of this?” I found it interesting the title of the book was part of our pre-review discussion as a group as the question came up, was this a good title for this book and does the question get answered.
Great question.
I for one think yes, while Yancey does not come right out and give the answer, I feel it is demonstrated throughout the stories in which he shares. Time and again he travels to be with the hurt and the broken and their stories come through. It reminds me of people I know such as Patty Wetterling (in 1989, while I was pregnant with our second son, hers was abducted while riding his bike not 70 miles from my own home and never found). Wetterling went on to found the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, and continues to this day to be a well known advocate for child safety. My friend Connie Stanz, the amazing lady who I am writing about, contacted AIDS in 1981 from a blood transfusion. This year she has lived 30 years with AIDS and runs a camp locally for children and adults with AIDS. Year round she speaks on stigma, taking care of yourself, etc….
Where is God when it hurts? Where God’s people are. Where misery is, there is the Messiah, and now on earth the Messiah takes form in the shape of the church. That’s what the body of Christ means. Page 34
Ok – maybe I digress but what I seen in this book was people in all situations maybe not on the track that they thought they would be on due to life “opportunities”, I see God using us the ordinary and making us extraordinary. This is faith in tragedy’s wake. Early on in the book Philip Yancey talks about a near death experience when he rolls his SUV he is driving. While waiting for help three questions came to mind:
1.Who will I miss? 2.How have I spent my life? 3.Am I ready for what happens next?
Those are questions that give me pause as well and as he wrote them I had to ask them to myself.
The book has some interesting chapters and one that stuck with most of the Faith N Fiction group was the one about the former sex workers. I enjoyed parts of this book and the stories that went with it. I liked the thought of Philip going into these different parts of our world and seeing that God does work within the brokenness of our circumstances.
So what Good is God? I believe He builds us up through the ashes of broken lives and dreams. Look in the book… look at the things that people have faced and how they came through. I seen this read as showing that God does show up – not always in the ways we had hoped, but always as He had planned. Advocates, strong people of faith are built in many cases through hardship.
Romans 8 reminds us that all these things can be used for good. All of them are redeemable.
The book is not perfect, I liked it but as I said earlier, I have liked some of his other writing better. My takeaway comes a lot from who I am and where my passions lie and how God works within these passions in me.
(I apologize if this review seems scattered, I booked myself pretty tight with commitments this weekend and had a class last night and today again from 8 – noon. I had a small window to come home and write this before I have to go and pick up Chance…. the proactive side of me should have written this days ago and it is totally on me that I waited until the last minutes to organize my thoughts here. :))
There are some wonderful thoughts around the blogesphere today on this book… please stop and check them out!
It has been three years since the tragic accident that took the lives of Mia’s entire family (If I Stay), the accident that left Mia herself barely clinging to life in a coma. At that time, high school boyfriend Adam Wilde had been by her side, whispering in her ear, supporting her, calling her back to this world, and Mia did.
Now Mia and Adam live on opposite coasts. Mia has made a full recovery from the accident and has gone back to playing her cello. After finishing her schooling at Julliard, she is now playing on stages and touring the country.
Yet Adam is not faring so well. When Mia recovered and left – she left him behind as well. Adam never fully understood what happened to them and as he dealt with his anger and loss it came out in his music. Angry songs that feed teenage angst are a different sound for Adam and his band but these songs that Adam wrote through his deep pain puts Collateral Damage on the top of the charts.
One night, a very unhappy with his life Adam takes a walk in New York City before hopping on a plane the next day for the Europe leg of the bands tour. The rest of the band left that day, but Adam did not want to fly on Friday the 13th so opted to join them the next day. While walking he discovers that Mia is performing at Carnegie Hall. Having not seen her in the three years since she left, Adam buys a ticket and slumps into the darkened theater to watch her play and planning to slip out as soon as it is over. However, for a highly recognizable guy as the lead singer of Collateral Damage is, the whispers go through the audience and Mia spots him and requests he join her back stage.
Face to face with Mia after all these years is both painful and the things dreams are made of. Over the course of one evening Mia and Adam walk the streets of New York and relive the past from their days of dating, to the accident, and why she left.
If I Stay and Where She Went by Gayle Forman
This is not one of those sequels that I can say, “Oh you do not need the first book, you can just pick up Where She Went,” and you will catch right up. No, in this case not only do you need the first book, If I Stay – you will want it. If I Stay holds the love between Adam and Mia and it is a necessary step to get to Where She Went. If I Stay is the story of a young cellist (Mia) and her rocker boyfriend (Adam) and how they made their different lives work together, until a tragedy of epic proportion puts a whole new direction in both their young lives.
I just finished Where She Went, late last night. I looked at the clock when I closed the last satisfying page at is was 12:30 in the morning. Where She went, as described above picks up three years later after both teens have now gone their separate ways. While Mia’s career is all gorgeous music and seems to be going in the direction she had always planned…. Adam’s is not.
Adam carries the loss of Mia on his shoulder. While he does have a girlfriend, she can not replace this image of Mia that he has in his mind. Through pain killers, late nights, and smoking, Adam is not the man he was three years ago. He is bitter, the band is always fighting and while they tour he does not even stay in the same hotel as they do…. Mia’s absence has left such a big hole in Adam that he keeps trying to fill it with all the wrong things trying to move on but winding up right back at square one.
This book was told from Adam’s perspective and at first I trudged through the background catch up story of Adam much like someone would trudge through a garbage dump. Carefully and watch where you are going… Adam’s life was dark and angry and author Gayle Forman reflects that well as she lays out a life for Adam that some on the outside may say is glamorous, (he is famous, girls fall at his feet, he has money…) but as you read into Adam’s life you will clearly see it is not glamorous at all.
It amazes me how I filled my mind with Adam’s world feeling that missing connection probably as much as he did and then how the book changes and flows once you bring Mia into the story. Mia is balance. And that is where I started relaxing into the read, curious as to where she really did go… and what that meant.
A satisfying sequel that leaves me with that feeling I have when I know I will think about a book long after that final page is closed. It touched me in the way that Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall did. How the paths we choose can lead us far and away and what it takes to find the right path again.
Amazon Rating
The 2011 WHERE Are You Reading Map had been updated to include Where She Went
I was uber excited to be offered this book for review after
my book club read If I Stay in February of this year.
The big 30 is right around the corner and friends Jennifer, Holly, and Amanda are starting to question if they are truly doing what they wanted to be doing with their lives. In 2006, the girls make a pact, quit their media jobs in Manhattan and take a leap of adventure, committing to a year-long trip around the world in search of inspiration and direction. In the dust of their departure they leave a trail of boyfriends and apartments.
Through thick and thin (and sometimes…. it does wear very thin!) the girls learn to rely on each other… sometimes funny, sometimes scary, and everything in between.
Amanda, Holly, and Jennifer (The NOT SO Lost Girls)
I recently read this joke that said, when a man takes off to find himself it is called a journey. When a woman does it, she is lost. Reading The Lost Girls made me laugh at the thought of this… these girls are not lost at all… they are adventurers; they have a heart for more and they speak my language. 😀
Have you ever just wanted to get lost? I used to have this fantasy of going off in the woods like Grizzly Adams (or…. err.. the female version of Adams) and just get away from it all…. the commitments, phones, the noise of life… and live off the land. Ok, ok you scoff because those who know me know about four days of that and I would be packing it up for the “big city” of Brainerd Minnesota, constantly checking for cell phone reception….. my point however is – that I did have this dream of myself just getting up and going, and so did these three girls.
I adored this book of the adventures of these three amazing women who threw caution to the wind and explored our world as most of us have only dreamed of. (Honestly – I wish they would have called me -I would have gladly been a fourth lost girl!)
There is so much to this book that I enjoyed I do not even know where to begin! The part of their trip that took them to Kenya where they worked in an orphanage with girls touched me deeply. Touring the killing fields in Cambodia would have taken my breath away. They traveled to the places that may not be the easiest, and I appreciated that this was not a book of “cruise ship” port stops.
I also love love ♥LOVE ♥that these women did not walk away from boring slouchy jobs… oh no, their jobs sound to me like…. well…. BLISS. Jennifer was a marketing manager at VH1, Holly was an Editor at Self Magazine and Amanda was an editor at Shape Magazine. The move to motivation was not the fact that they did not like these jobs, but more that they wondered if this was what they really wanted out of life…. the working too much… and living too little.
In the end the women found that the problems that they once found to be all-consuming in their pre-lost girls moment, were nothing compared to the troubles those in other countries face. Jennifer, Holly, and Amanda learned that things are never as bad as they seem and their lives no matter how cluttered and frustrating at times, are still pretty great lives.
For anyone who has ever dreamed of exploring the world and just letting go and seeing what happens, this book can take you there.
It is Berlin 1942. When 9-year-old Bruno comes home from school one day he finds that the house maid is in his room packing up his belongings. In short notice he finds out that his father has received a promotion and the family will moving to a new home far away. Bruno is devastated as his best friends in the world are here and he loves his neighborhood and loves to explore, however there is no changing the plan that has been set in motion.
Along with his mother, and 12-year-old sister Gretel, they make the move. Their new home is large and creepy. There are no neighborhood kids to play with and nothing to do. Out of boredom Bruno decides to go on an adventure and discover what lies beyond the property where his father has forbidden him to go…. and here is where he finds Shmuel, a skinny, dirty, little Jewish boy.
Shmuel is also 9, in fact he was born on the same day as Bruno! Bruno is excited and is already planning adventures in his mind of what he and Shmuel can do together. Yet this seems to be a problem as Shmuel is on the other side of a large sharp wired fence and for some reason is always wearing striped pajamas, much like all the other men and boys behind this fence.
As Shmuel tells his story of being taken from their home and made to live in a one room area with another family making 11 people living in the room, Bruno feels Shmuel must be lying, surely that many people in such a small space is impossible!
Bruno continues to sneak out to see Shmaul and brings him food which he devours, and they talk and talk and become fast friends. While Bruno does not understand his fathers job, he does know that his father would not approve of this friendship so he keeps his adventures with Shmaul a secret.
Until one day Bruno and Shmaul have an idea… an idea that brings this book to a conclusion that pretty much stopped my heart and put a whole new twist on Holocaust literature.
This movie was one that will stick with me for a long long time.
I seen the movie, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas before I read this book. That is usually a taboo thing for me to do, but I had never read the story and one day thought it would be good to see the movie on Netflix. The movie shocked me. How can I think I know what a book is about but I really know nothing?
In short time I had secured the book from my local library as I always appreciate the book more than the movie (well – almost always). Yes time went by and I renewed the book twice and still had not read it. In fact this week it was in the car to go back to the library unread…. and then when I was going to the chiropractor this week I needed something to read in the waiting room and guess what the only book was I had in the car? Yup…. this one.
So – between the three appointments I had this week, I devoured this book to the point of no return…. and I mean that literally…. when I went to the library and turned in an audio I had completed, this book remained in the car. No return not then anyway…. 😀
The Boy In The Striped Pajamas is a devastating read. Lets just put that out there now. I am amazed how we as human beings can treat each other so poorly – be so mislead in what we think is right… it breaks my heart. Time and time again you can read fictional stories like this (that may as well have been real) as well as true stories that you wish were fiction.
Hannah at Word Lily has been posting a blurb out of a book called True Grit, every day for lent. Talk about your frightening statistics and some of them are just what I am talking about here… the things we as people do to other people – some due to race, background, gender, faith, where they live, the list goes on and on…
and so… back to the book. I give John Boyne so much credit for writing this. It is a hard story. It is a maddening story. I was just as impressed with the book as I was with the movie. The innocence of Bruno is perfect as he meets daily with his friend and not understanding that Shmaul is in a concentration camp – or even what that would mean.
What this book shows is a friendship that no fences can separate. It is a heartbreaking innocent story that could not have been told as well if the main character had been an adult. It had to be a child… the innocence of childhood that makes this work…. and work well.
The movie shocked me…. the book broke me.
A POWERFUL read of historical fiction that will knock personal prejudices down to rubble.
It was just a list. Just a list that Valerie started in a notebook of those people in school…. in life who bugged her. And when Valerie and Nick became a couple… she shared the list with him and it became a “thing” they liked to add to…. the bullies, the tormentors, just a way to vent and release the pressures of home life for both her and Nick.
or so Valerie thought.
Until one day at the end of their Jr year in High School, Nick pulls a gun in the commons, looking to take out those on “the list.” When the shooting is done, 6 students and one teacher are dead, Valerie has a bullet in her leg from trying to stop Nick, who shoots her before he takes his own life. The list is discovered as evidence and it looks to her fellow students as well as Valerie’s parents, that she was an accomplish in the shooting.
And even Valerie has to wonder…. was she to blame?
When she bravely returns to school for her SR year she finds that everything has changed. Her once friends have nothing to do with her. With the help of her therapist and a determination to see things as they really are, Valerie begins to see things in a new light and finds friendship comes in many different forms.
Another cover, but I prefer the one I have which is the one at the top of this review
Ok… you may be saying, “really Sheila? Another book on school shootings?” And in a way you could be right. I have no idea why tragedy draws me in to books – fiction and non, but it does. Take my reviews of Think No Evil by Jonas Beiler (true Amish school shooting), Columbine by Dave Cullen ( true story about the Columbine shootings), Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Piccoult (fictional story of a boy teased to the point of doing the unthinkable), We Need To Talk About Kevin (fictional take on a troubled boy…) read pre-blogging for book club, She Said Yes (pre blogging read about a girl who survived the Columbine shooting… ok, you get the gist… I do read about tragedy and overcoming…
BUT (and it is a big BUT) this book is not about a school shooting. Ok – it is, as in it starts with a school shooting… but really, this book is about Valerie and what Valerie does to overcome what has happened. Even the author says this in the back of the book under authors note, “Hate List was never a story about a school shooting. From day one, this story was always Valerie’s story.”
I really like that because Valerie’s story can be so many others story…. others who have survived similar tragedies and must go on… because really, not only the dead are victims in any crime. So many live, or try to live with the aftermath and Hate List is really about that. What do you do when you feel you should have known what was going to happen? When others blame you and you are not so sure they are wrong?
Author, Jennifer Brown says when the idea was forming in her mind for this book there was a song stuck in her head… it was Nickelback’s If Everyone Cared”, and so to put you right “there for the rest of this review…. let’s get a little Nickelback going, shall we?
Hmmmm….. Valerie’s song? I think so. (I have to say this is an easy sell for me – I really like Nickelback).
I really liked the way Jennifer Brown wrote this book. I mentioned books above that I have read with a similar topic but this is the first book I have read that focused on a survivor and how she moved forward. And really I have to say this story speaks to anyone who has survived any tragedy…. you become someone new and as you try to understand this “new you” and you battle your old self as well.
Ok I digress…
Valerie is a well written character and Jennifer Brown does an excellent job of flushing out who she really is as she struggles to find her place in this new world, after the shooting. What I also liked is that throughout the entire book we know that Valerie loved Nick and…. I can even understand that. Nick is also written well so you can see him as a vulnerable victim as well. I think the beauty of this particular book is that it takes some unlikely friends to change the mind of an entire school – to look at things differently and see things and people as they really are.
“Just concentrate on being in the moment”, he said. “Don’t read into things. See what’s really there ok?”
~ Dr. Hieler page 17 – Hate List
Hate List was an amazing read. In the end – I was left with that gentle hum inside of reading a great book. I still keep flipping through those final pages, mainly because it makes so much sense. Its like I am trying to hold that to memory, that we are who we make ourselves to be… and sometimes… sometimes, it takes a completely different perspective to open our eyes to what is real.
Book Journey 