Fabian {Councillor}'s Reviews > Hate List

If you are a student, then it is highly likely that you know about the constant fear of someone running on a killing spree in your school building or your university. If not, then at least you probably have relatives or friends who could potentially be involved in such a tragedy, just as everyone can possibly become a victim to such a horrifying scenario. That's what this book is about: the way an entire school deals with a killing spree after Nick Levil opened fire in the school cafeteria, killing several students and himself. I am not that well-informed about the circumstances in different countries, but here in Germany, tragedies like these have accompanied people for years, especially after the well-known and widely dreaded shooting sprees of Erfurt (2002), Emsdetten (2006) and Winnenden (2009). Emergency plans are now hanging on the doors of each classroom and instructions are given how to behave in such a case at the beginning of every schoolyear.

But past events and the severe lack of security measures tell another story: that it would be easy for almost everyone to walk into a classroom or a lecture hall and kill at least ten people by random before someone can stop the killer. This is something which can never be truly predicted or prevented, not even with huge prevention activites (which, of course, cannot be found here at the moment). And this fear or becoming victim to such a tragedy as well as the aftermaths of it are what Hate List by Jennifer Brown deals with.

Killing sprees are a serious topic which now and then invades the headlines and causes serious upheaval among the population. What makes it such a fascinating topic for an author to explore? It's the way they can't be predicted. Which thoughts have to run through the mind of a young person before walking through his or her school and killing dozens of people? How can such a deed be motivated? Why is it that nobody, not the parents, nor the friends, nor the girlfriend, ever sensed that something could happen?

In this book, Valerie Leftman, the first-person narrator, is introduced as the girlfriend of the boy who killed those innocent people. While in their relationship, Nick was sweet, loving and caring, even though Valerie knew that he had some contacts to the wrong friends. In addition to that, Nick and Valerie, both considering themselves to be outsiders in their school, created a Hate List with the names of people they hate. And when Nick begins the shooting, those persons whose names appear on that list are chosen by him explicitly to be killed before finally he can be stopped, leading him to kill himself. When the book begins, five months have passed, and Valerie has to return to her school again. Everyone considers her to be the girlfriend of that killer, some even accuse her of having known about his plans, and nothing is going to make it easy for Valerie at her school.

The social issue weighed heavily into this book, but apart from that, Valerie felt like a typical seventeen-year-old teenager to me, portrayed with almost the same character traits as all the other seventeen-year-old female protagonists in all those Young Adult novels out there. Her character had nothing special surrounding her, except for the constant self-pitying and selfishness. Her father was portrayed in a way which could not have been more negative, a way which is sadly too often occuring in reality. Her mother was portrayed in a way mothers shouldn't be portrayed, and the only character who sticked out to me as being interesting was Nick Levil, the perpetrator, for the mere fact that nobody suspected anything before he went on his killing spree. The most enthralling part of this novel was the way the author dealt with Nick's complicated mind; after all, what could turn a guy who reads Shakespeare for fun and has a (relatively) healthy social life into a killer?

In the end, the premise convinced me most in this novel, while the characters fell flat for me and the plot balanced on a constant middle course between boring and interesting. However, it is possible that this novel was just a case of "it's me, not you", so I will recommend reading Anne's fantastic review and let yourself be convinced that this book deserves to be checked out.