***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of #NotReadyToDie by Cate Carlyle in exchange for my honest review.***



The only good part of #NotReadyToDie is that it’s short. Reviewing will be difficult because Cate Carlyle’s story isn’t just bad, it’s terrible. Ginny, hiding under her desk during a school shooting, her crush Owen is shot and blood is dripping toward her, has time to narrate her life, her romantic hopes, history of self injury while teaming up with Kayla, a popular girl to nurse the wounded.

I can guarantee, if we asked any of the Columbine or Parkland or other mass shooting survivors what they were thinking during a shooting, it wasn’t about the bleeding guy asking them to prom. #NotReadyToDie is an insult to teenagers and disrespectful to shooting survivors.

Aside from a terrible premise, #NotReadyToDie is filled with 1990s cultural references that Carlyle needs to explain to readers, rendering them meaningless. I’ve read a number of very good YA novels centered around school shootings. Avoid #NotReadyToDie.

5 stars.
This is a heartbreaking novel, about a school shooting through the eyes of a teenage student.

Most of the plot happens in a day, where the emotional agony the characters were going through was making me cry. I have no words for this novel, it was raw, beautiful and sad at the same time.