Enjoy For Free The Lucky Ones Outlined By Liz Lawson Accessible Through Audio Book

knew The Lucky Ones by Liz Lawson would be an emotional read and that's exactly what I got,
A wonderful debut novel by Liz Lawson, Update: I'm putting this back on the shelf for now,



I read the first five chapters and really enjoyed them, However, it's basically October, so I want only October type books at this time,



To be picked up again soon, . .

Original:

I'm picking this up as my last roll for Bookopolathon, which was to read a sad book.


This sounds hella sad and I'm ready, Bring on the tears!

I am rating this four out of five, but more because of the serious subject matter and how well it was handled.

I had to agree with one of the characters, Lucy, when she scolded May for being blindly selfabsorbed each time May vented her anger and pent up feelings regarding the school shooting that took her twin brother's life.
May behaved as if no one else could possibly be feeling the same amount of pain and guilt that she was enduring, She often mocked other students' expressions of grief and ridiculed their coping mechanisms,
I actually did not like May, nor could I understand why someone as decent as Zach would fall in love with May, She was impossibly selfcentered and just plain harsh,
It must

be true that you have to treat a man badly in order to keep him, because Zach just kept coming back for more.

May certainly has a lot to feel guilty about, Her actions and words at Adam's fateful party set in motion a series of events that would change everyone's life forever, including her own.
May was not alone in having said and done things that she could never take back, but she was too focused on herself to see the suffering and guilt of her fellow students.


In the end, I was glad to see that May and her mother were able to find their way back to one another.
I did often feel sorry for May, but I got tired very quickly of all the near fainting episodes and the constant outbursts of hysteria.
May needed more medical support than she was being given at the time, and I know the author was trying to highlight this issue: young people don't have enough mental health support.
But the unremitting melodrama and May's constant catatonic states were grating on my nerves after a while,

Could this tragedy the school shooting have been averted The shooter, David, felt alienated and ostracized by his classmates, He was lonely. As a society, we seem to enjoy pouring scorn on others, establishing a pecking order, We need to stop this very toxic behaviour,

Everyone should be welcome and respected in a community, We need to learn to coexist, Hey: Maybe we should abolish high school and everyone should be home schooled Seriously, though, I don't have any real solutions to prevent future crimes like the school shooting depicted in this story.
No one deserves to be bullied and marginalized, We need to reach out to one another and be inclusive, We have to realize that fostering this extreme competitive spirit in young people can lead to very dangerous consequences, You establish pecking orders, but soon someone at the bottom rung is going to get tired of being picked on and fight back,

The writing was excellent, but May exhausted me, I have never approved of public displays of extreme emotion: that is just blatant attentionseeking, May was one big freaked out beacon of attention seeking, I'm glad her personality improved toward the end, but Zach deserved better, Wow! Such a powerful novel, A Real Look Stars
Spoiler Free
There are times when we experience things we shouldn't have to, The teaching of young children as to what to do during an active shooter situation is one of them, Unfortunately, it is a sign of our particular times, As a mother of two sons, I am very lucky they were out of all schooling, so it wasn't something I needed to deal with.


The Lucky Ones by Liz Lawson is a debut novel of the highest regard, It looks at the devastation and impact of all those involved with these shootings, how the one incident is like the pebble skipped across the lake and how its contact is not just the entry point.


Like the ripples on the lake of people touched by this tragedy, all are changed, For the main character, Mia, she lost her twin brother, She is overwhelmed by survivor's guilt, She is suffering from PTSD and has gone through levels of rage, She barely has a handle on getting through the day and now after eleven months, she is being forced to go to another high school that is made up of both schools.
One that had the shooting and the other that did not,

Zach is another victim of this shooting but in an entirely different way, His mother is the defense attorney for the shooter, By her doing "Her Job", it has changed everything in his world, His father is a ghost, he has to look out for his sister and he has no real friends anymore, The adage of the sins of the father fall on the son is exactly that but with the mother being the culprit, Every day there is a hurdle he has to overcome, either someone trashing his house or trashing him at school, He is in a loselose situation,

These two cross paths because of the only friends each has are forcing them to be someplace, Zach's friend is auditioning for his band and Mia's bestie is one of the people auditioning, Things can happen as simple as that,

This is not an easy read, yet is one that is worthwhile, Seeing what can take place and the aftermath is so important these days, Nothing is black and white, . . shades of gray can be the norm and we need to be there for others any way they want us to be, . . To listen, learn and not judge,

A very strong debut novel,


A gifted copy was provided by author/publisher via NetGalley for an honest review,

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Before Reading
So excited to start this.
. .

With all that can happen in Life, . .
Growing Pains for Teens shouldn't be So Complicated, . .

As Adults, We've All Been There, Done That, . .
But then Something Happens to these teens, . .
Something We Never had to deal with, . .

Examining the All Too Timely subject of School Tragedy, . .
Liz Lawson's The Lucky Ones takes a look at just that, . .

Those who are considered the "lucky ones", . .
How do they handle it all, . .
Will they Find the Light left in the World
And come out the other side, . .

The Lucky Ones April,

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sitelink Remember the name Liz Lawson.


Told from two POVs, THE LUCKY ONES tells the story two students in the aftermath of a school shooting, May, whose brother was killed, and Zach, whose mother is defending the shooter,

Gutting from the first page, THE LUCKY ONES is an unflinching look at the relentless grief we heap upon ourselves when we feel responsible directly or indirectly for the harm we've brought upon those we love.
Liz Lawson takes what could've been a straightforward story about sorrow and digs deeper, creating a story of survivor's remorse unlike any I've read before.


There's some kissing too, And rock music. Liz reeeeeaally wanted to make the characters huge Post Malone fans, but don't worry, I talked her out of it, The Aftermath!



Extremely good and emotional book, It was a bit of a tearjerker, but not quite as bad as I expected, It deals with what happens in the aftermath of a school shooting, not so much the shooting itself, It doesnt go in depth into the why it happened or what the shooter was going through, but focuses on a girl that survived while her twin brother didnt.
Especially concentrating on her PTSD and survival guilt,

The book takes place nearly a year after the shooting occurred and May McGintee is returning to public school after being homeschooled for six months.
After the shooting she had returned to school but was eventually kicked out due to the fact that she got in too many fights.
Her anger was out of control and it still is growing inside her and she struggles to keep it in,

Only a few days after she was kicked out of school, the school board decided that having the students attend the same school where the shooting occurred was toxic, so they closed it.
Now the kids from Carter High School were moved to another school in the valley called Quincy Adams High School, It is overcrowded and the halls are packed solid in between classes, The Carter Kids all hang together and the QA kids hang with their own so the kids are a bit segregated in that way.


May is angry at just about everything, but one thing her anger is really focused on is the lawyer who is defending the shooter.
Most of the kids from QA have either ignored or have been outright hostile to Zach Teller since his Mom decided to defend the shooter.
Zach is just as mad at his Moms decision as everyone else, but that doesnt seem to matter to anyone besides his best friend Connor who wont give up on him.


Conner is still popular, he has the kind of personality that everyone is drawn to and he is also in a band that is gaining popularity around town.
The band just lost their drummer and is holding tryouts for a new drummer, and Conner forces Zach to come along with him and though Zach usually backs out, Conner wont let him this time.


Mays best friend Lucy has been a drummer since she was very young and has been in different bands over the years, but is sick of her current band so is planning to go to the tryouts.
She bribes May into coming along with with her and that is how May and Zach meet each other, They get along and like each other, though May doesnt yet know that Zachs last name is Teller and he is he son of the lawyer she hates so much.


The book is awesome, the world building is spectacular, characters are deep and we see into their minds and their struggles, Both Zack and May are dealing with so much, not only within themselves but within their families, Their friends struggle to help them as well though they also have their own issues, and many other people at the school have issues as well.
The author, Liz Lawson, does a terrific job of showing how this incident has affected so many different people,

Though of course Mays story is the most poignant since she not only lost her twin, but was in the band room where the other kids were shot and was the only one to make it out alive.
She suffers from recurring nightmares, she is getting strange mail, she feels so much guilt and you just cant help but put yourself in her shoes when she is missing her brother.


It is hard to believe that the massacre at Columbine High School happened overyears ago now and there are still school shootings happening all the time.
In a CNN article, by Michelle Lou and Christina Walker, on July,, it was reported that so far inthere have beenshootings at US schools in which someone was hurt or killed.
A scary time to send your kids to school,

I voluntarily read amp reviewed an advanced copy of this book, All thoughts and opinions are my own,

sitelinkBlogsitelinkGoodreadssitelinkFacebooksitelinkAmazonsitelinkTwittersitelinkBookBub This book has a,Goodreads Community rating as of April, making it officially overrated, It's just such a bleh book, yet seriously annoying, tedious and lacking in plot, I didn't like most of the characters and the story should have been Lucy trying to deal with everyone's shit,

May kinda sucks, Yes her brother died, it was horrible and she has PTSD, Free pass on all of that, However she's emotionally unpredictable and manipulative, laughing one minute and aggressively attacking Zach the next, especially when he attempts to do something Actually Nice for her.


Zach sucks. He falls in lust with May as soon as he sees her, basically pursuing her for most of the book, obsessing over kissing her even when she's deep into talking about her feelings about her brother's death, and then when he finds out she's the one graffiting his garage door he drops her like hot shit and decides SHE must have been the one manipulating HIM.


Zach's mom sucks, She decides to defend a shooter, putting her kids at risk of bullying and worse, spends her entire time physically unavailable leaving Zach to do the parenting for him and his sister, then at the end makes some random speech about how things aren't black and white so all is fine now.


May's parents really suck, It was astounding for me how a girl who has black out panic attacks every day, attacks people in a violent rage, is suicidal and sometimes stays in bed for a good week, was not sectioned or even seemed to have a therapist What the hell was going on with that

The only small praise I can give this book is that it did not once, ever, attempt to focus on the shooter, his character or his actions, and never tried to excuse what he did.
He was in the background of the story and largely stayed that way,

Oh and Lucy, who loved both twins, lost one, and was constantly there to pick up May's pieces was the true highlight of the book and kept me going.
She was amazing. .