Valerie’s flashbacks to the days and years before the shooting illustrate Nick’s character. Much of the community believes she dispatched her boyfriend to eliminate those on her hate list, bullies that Valerie had, at one time or another, casually wished “dead” in her hate list. As such, not only does Valerie lose Nick that day, most people assume she and Nick collaborated to murder their classmates. Valerie becomes nationally known as the creator of the hate list after the mass shooting, during which Nick Levil opens fire in The Commons, a busy student union area, leaving multiple students named in the book and several innocent bystanders dead or wounded.

Accordingly, Nick’s behavior becomes both more secretive and violent during the pair’s junior year. As their anger grows, the entries in the hate list become more violent and arbitrary. As the bullying escalates, so does the anger within Valerie and Nick.

Although Valerie finds solace in Nick, she begins self-identifying as a loser. Valerie and Nick form an unhealthy attachment, one driven by an “us against them” mentality. Both are from unhappy homes, and both are bullied relentlessly. As the bullying intensifies for Valerie during sophomore year, she turns to Nick, another outsider, for support. Hate List uses a first-person, limited narration, following Valerie’s life from her sophomore year through her senior year at Garvin High School. In addition, both teenagers bond over their unstable home life. Valerie shares flashbacks to establish the bullying the two endure. The novel depicts how the two form a friendship that evolves into a star-crossed romance. Immediately, the two bond over their shared unhappiness, and the list. Throughout the novel, Valerie explains the origin of the hate list, a list she invents to record bad things that happen to her, like bullying or fighting between her parents. The novel begins on the day Valerie returns to Garvin High, roughly six months after the school shooting.

Hate list novel