Knowing you could have been the one, and yet you are still breathing, how do you keep breathing, keep living in the shadow of her death? Very real, very introspective inquiry on how to live in the wake of horror.

This was a book where after reading, I really had to sit back and reflect for a few days on what I really thought about the book. At the end of the day though, I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about it. I went into the book thinking that it will be an incredibly emotional read especially with that premise but I don’t really think that’s how it ended up for me. In fact, now that I think about it, about ¾ of the way in, I was more invested in simply finishing the book rather than being invested in the story and that says a lot, I think.

I think that this book had a ton of great potential because you’re following a mysterious main character who could have been the one who was raped and murdered by a fellow student so she is now facing with survivor’s guilt. What I enjoyed most about the book was the fact that this girl raised a lot of important questions that are hard to ask and even harder to answer. For the most part, I enjoyed following her journey as she learned to forgive and move on especially from something so tragic.

On the flip side though, I absolutely despised the romance between her and Charlie who was the boyfriend of the girl who was murdered. In a way I get that finding love is part of the healing process but I don’t think it should have been with the boy whose girlfriend died in that tragic incident. He was clearly still grieving and for him to love someone else, I think it was much more pertinent that he finish grieving or at least is on the last stages of grief before moving on. I honestly think that the romance between those two actually took me away from the main character’s own grieving process and from the book as a whole.

Overall, I think that there are definitely some solid points that are made in this book that I thoroughly enjoyed. However, as stated earlier, there were also parts of it that I could have done without. I also didn’t find the entire book to be incredibly emotional like I had initially expected so if you’re going in to this book with that same expectation then I suggest that you change that ASAP.

Overall this was a huge disappointment. I thought this would be an emotional read but it was often shallow and quite tedious to read.

What if a classmate of yours was murdered, brutally and unfairly? And what if you'd had an equal chance to be killed yourself - what if you were one in five who had been texted, and the first responder was the one who met their untimely demise? How would you cope, conduct yourself?

That's the premise of HSDHIL, and it's an emotional thrill ride that I think all young adults need to be exposed to. I highly recommend this book to anyone, young or old, who has experienced a sudden death loss.

This book was about an unimaginable crime and how the victims friends tried to heal and live normal lives after it. Good read.