Afternoon Literature discussion

This is a powerful, psychological novel which depicts the aftermath of a school shooting from the point of view of the shooter's girlfriend. In it, we explore loss, grief, guilt, blame, redemption and hope.

But this book has mixed reviews, so what did you think?

What did you think about the protagonist Valerie?
Valerie suffers from guilt over the attack, do you think she deserves any of the blame?
What do you think of the portrayal of Nick Levell, the shooter?
Do you think there are any hope and optimism at the end?
Valerie doesn't have a great home life, what did you think about her parents? What did you think of the portrayal of the families in the novel?
Hate List deals with a lot of issues experienced by teens today - bullying, suicidal thoughts, low-income families, and drugs - to name a few, what did this novel make you think about these issues?

Please feel free to answer as many or as few of these questions as you please, and pose your own!

I'm working on my review of Hate List now, but preliminary, I can say that I love this book. For me, I don't think that it is actually a book about a 'school shooting' per say. I think it is a book about young people who have been through a great, man-made tragedy, and how they manage to cope with it.

In my review, I'm planning on talking about a lot of the questions I've put above, and I'll be glad to discuss those questions in this group, but what I want to write about in my comment is the school shooting.

I wondered if the fact that this is a school shooting was actually important - could this happen anywhere, or is it specifically an American epidemic? We've had school shootings in the UK, but it just isn't quite the same. Hate List doesn't discuss this, it doesn't deal with the fact that Nick was given such ready access to a gun and maybe that is part of what caused this tragedy. In the book people blame Valerie, she blames herself, and the school blame the Hate List, but no one blames the fact that Nick Levell, who was clearly unwell, could cause such devastation because he could get a gun. Nick was not going to do much damage with a notebook.

I don't know if talking about this would have been a good thing for Hate List to do? Or if it is better than it did not, making the book less political and focusing it on being a story of people and healing. I'm not sure and I wonder what other people think? Should more have been discussed about guns and gun control here?