Weekly Reflection #3

Book: Hate List
Author: Jennifer Brown
Pages Read: 220 - 405 (end)

The first comment I made this week during my reading was how bad I felt for Valerie because of her family situation. With her parents going through a brutal divorce, and the discovery that her father was cheating on her mom for years, Valerie feels as though she has no one, no where to turn. I feel like she had made so much progress throughout the book, and her dad just dismisses all of it like she is still this huge burden to her family. Valerie asks her father if she can forgive her, and his reply was ""No", he said, without facing me."Maybe it makes me a bad parent, but I don't know if I can. No matter what the police found, you were involved in that shooting, Valerie. You wrote those names on that list. You wrote my name on that list. You had a good life here. You may not have pulled the trigger, but you helped cause the tragedy". I believe her father is completely out of line for saying such things to her after all the things she has gone through the past year. Her father continued to treat his daughter horribly and also cause her little brother to turn against her. I at first like Valeries dad as a character, but the last 7 chapters of this book really showed his true colours as a person which made me really dislike the character and route even more for Valerie and her mother.
I had made a prediction when Valerie began to talk about going to a party with her new friends (all the people she hated just months ago). I made the prediction that something terrible would happen at that party, the author used foreshadowing to show that this was going to happen, the circumstances were just not right and that's what caused me to come to this prediction. After continuing reading my prediction was right and not only one thing went wrong it was just a series of horrible events. The worst event of the night would have to be Valerie being threatened by her friends brother, he said ""So was this the kind of gun your psycho boyfriend used?" he asked, turning the gun in his hand contemplatively. He aimed it at my leg. "Do you recognize it? It's not so tough to get ahold of one. My dad hides this one in the rafters downstairs. If I wanted, I could make people go away, just like Nick did." I believe this was by far the worst event of the night because Valerie was being watched over at the party by some guy so she didn't kill anyone there, and than to have her life threatened by a friend? That has got to be the worst, I believe Valerie did not deserve what had happened to her but she should have seen what was going to happen. If the person who is throwing the party doesn't want you there, its probably a bad idea to go.
Lastly I just finished the book this week and I am shocked at how great of a book it was. I would recommend it to anyone, it was a very heavy book though and some people just do not like that type of book. It was the type of book that you have troubles putting it down. The book was light hearted at times, but most of the time it was heart wrenching and I felt as though I was cheering for Valerie the entire time. The book was also relatable because of how the high school was portrayed, because there are cliques, distinct social groups, and bullies in every high school. This is an everyday reality for us. although this book is a few years old, it is still current enough that it is a great representation as an incite into high school life. I hope that something like this does does not happen to our school because of the size of our school population it would hurt even more people and families. All in all I hope to pass on this book to friends in this class and await their opinions on the book. Also I think it would be a great book for lit circles in high school because of its relatability, and the content of the novel.