This book completely blew me away. I’m not sure I have the words to adequately review it, but I’ll try. The Lucky Ones is raw and real.

As I read, I felt like I was there with May and Zach—that’s how amazing this book was. I couldn’t put it down and I’m fairly certain I need a where are they now. I’d also like to thank Liz Lawson for the little My So-Called Life Easter Egg.

This was a powerful book about an important topic.

We follow alternating main characters, May and Zach. May is the lone survivor of a classroom shooter who killed her twin brother. Zach is the son of the lawyer who is defending the perpetrator. Needless to say, each of them are struggling to cope with the aftermath.

The raw emotions and realistically complex relationships made this book easy to get into and I finished within just a few sittings.

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 doesn’t 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 didn’t. 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 Mom’s decision as everyone else, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone besides his best friend Connor who won’t 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 won’t let him this time.

May’s 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 doesn’t yet know that Zach’s 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 May’s 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 can’t 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 over 20 years ago now and there are still school shootings happening all the time. In a CNN article, by Michelle Lou and Christina Walker, on July 27, 2019, it was reported that so far in 2019 there have been 22 shootings at US schools in which someone was hurt or killed.

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

THIS BOOK!!! It grabbed me from the first page and it didn’t let go, and now I’m just anxiously waiting for the rest of the world to read it because I desperately need to talk to someone about it.

‘The Lucky Ones’ is an exploration of loss, grief, and finding your place in the world. May and Zach are such real, expertly crafted characters, and the raw emotion in these pages made me fall head over heels for this story. Mark your calendars for April 2020, cause you DO NOT wanna miss this one.

May and Zach meet and make a connection before finding out important information about the other. I’m the aftermath of a school shooting May struggles to live again and Zach struggles to understand why his mom is defending the alleged shooter. This is a raw story that is all too real in the history of schools in the US. Told in alternating perspectives, the reader is left a bit stronger and more hopeful. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to be an early reader in exchange for my honest review.

*Spoiler free*

A book about what happens after school shootings. I knew this book would be heartbreaking, and I never know how I will react to those kinds of books. Sometimes they hit really well, and sometimes the emotions feel really overwhelming. But I wanted to give this one a try. It's something that is so prevalent now and it's something I wanted to give a try. Trigger warnings: This book deals with a school shooting. It's a hard book to read, so please take care of yourself.

This book is real. It's raw and it does not shy away from showing real life and real emotions, not matter how messy they are. It's stark.

This book made me uncomfortable, but I think in a good way? There's so much feeling to it. May is so angry and she is carrying so much. She doesn't know what do with everything that's on her shoulders. Zach has similar problems. He's sad and he's frustrated. None of these feelings are shied away from. They're there in all their messy glory. Sometimes it felt a bit overwhelming for me, but I can appreciate them.

This book was also messy. May is seriously struggling. She makes decisions that are questionable. She says things that could be considered rude. Her thought process is skewed. Zach is trying his best, and sometimes he takes the wrong path. Sometimes emotions overwhelm them and sometimes they do things that aren't the best. It was so real. It felt so realistic. The way May thought and the way May acted was so true to real life. I could understand her thought process and I could understand why she was doing what she was doing. Both of them of carrying so much and their emotion development was handled with such care.

It's hard to find what else to talk about. I was wondering why when I read reviews, they always seemed to be an overview instead of something more specific, but I understand now. I don't really want to talk about character development or anything other than that this book was done so well. It did what it was trying to do. It brings a light to something that we need to talk about. It brings a light to the pain people suffer after a shooting. It's just something that so real and so raw and it's done with care. I highly recommend reading it, if you feel like you can handle it.

There's also an author's note at the end, that was something amazing. I can't thank Lawson enough for including.

This book is full of pain and anger. It's heartbreaking. But I'm really glad I read it, because it's something so true to what is actually happening.

The Lucky Ones is told from two perspectives in the aftermath of a school shooting. May is a survivor of the shooting where her twin brother was killed. Zach is the son of the attorney representing the shooter. I thought this book was beautifully told. I felt like Liz Lawson, the author, captured the characters and their grief in authentic ways. I will be thinking about this book for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for allowing me to read and review this title.

May’s brother died in a school shooting. She was there but survived (“the lucky one.”). Zach’s mom is the shooters attorney. He’s been ostracized at school. May is just coming back to school and having issues of her own. They run into each other in a few places and start to feel not so alone. That is until May finds out who Zach’s mom is.
I loved this book. I think, unfortunately, this is a relevant topic for today’s youth. As a middle school teacher, I don’t like that there is cussing almost immediately. However, this book grabs ahold of you and keeps you interested throughout. This definitely should be on the shelves in high schools and public libraries. For middle schoolers though, it should be reserved for a more selective audience.

This book felt like it could be really powerful. The premise of the book suggests that there is going to be some hard material within the book, so I was expecting that going into it. What I wasn't expecting was the amount of swearing that would be within this book. As someone looking for books to include in spaces for young people, it was just too much for me to be able to feel good about recommending to middle schoolers/younger high schoolers (I.e. swearing every other page, or 10+ times in one chapter). I really wanted to read this book, but knowing what I am looking for, I had to put it down. If you are a person just looking for a great read for yourself or an older teen reader, then this might be a great book to recommend, particularly if you are trying to find a way for students to talk about grief or tragedy or for someone who just wants a book relevant to things happening today.

This is a very poignant and heartbreaking book about the aftermath of a school shooting. There are real people who are still dealing with the effects long after the news crews leave and the public moves on to the next tragedy. In this book, two young people ,in pain for different reasons resulting from the shooting, are drawn together in healing.

This is an important book that begs the question: how are we going to help this generation of kids who have to deal with a world in which they are targeted at their most vulnerable safe space?

This is a must-buy for high school and middle school libraries. I have not read anything like it before.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book.

This was a heartbreaker of a novel. May is angry. In fact, she is downright furious at everyone. Most especially with the lawyer that has taken the case of the student that walked into the band room and shot everyone in it...except her. May doesn't know how to deal with the guilt and pain of being the "lucky one", the one that walked away. All her feelings channel into rage.

Zach's life is forever changed when his mother takes the school shooter's case, representing him. He loses his girlfriend, his friends, his social standing. Only Collin stands by him. He wreaths himself in guilt for his mother's actions, his father's inaction, and in feeling like his world is crashing down.

So what happens when a raging girl and a guilty boy meet at a band rehearsal? Can May overcome her anger, and learn to trust others? Can she let go of the guilt and remember that it's okay to live? Will Zach realize that he is his own person, and that he sets his own path? Can he see that his parents are far from perfect, but so is he? Most of all, can the two of them come to terms with the ghosts that stand between them?

i ached for the characters of this book. I shed tears. I felt their grief and anger. It's not an easy read, but I feel it's necessary. Sometimes being the lucky one doesn't feel so lucky, and as a society, we need to see that.

Nothing short of amazing. Lawson captures grief and all the outcomes of tragedy very well. It was written well in two separate point of views. You don’t really think about how many victims there are in a tragedy like this. Lawson told the story well.

Great book. Well paced. Good read overall!! .

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of THE LUCKY ONES by Liz Lawson in exchange for my honest review.***

The moment I read the blurb for THE LUCKY ONES I preordered the book from Amazon. As soon as Liz Lawson’s debut showed up on NetGalley, I requested a copy. Today I won the ARC lottery, reshuffled my plans, cuddled up with my cat and my kindle and got started.

My heart when out to May, who lost her twin in a school shooting and while I couldn’t see myself reacting with her anger, I understood and empathized. I have read articles and a book about Twinless Twins, twins whose womb-mates have died, a rare loss unlike other sibling losses. May’s mixed feelings about Jordan, the more perfect twin she both admired and resented, complicate her grief. Adding to the trauma, May and the shooter are the only survivors from the band room shooting nearly a year ago.

Zach is persona non grata since his mother decided to defend the shooter. No longer popular, he’s bullied by his former friends and classmates. Zach made me melt into a bowl of mush. I rooted for him as much as May.

Both narrators were sympathetic, multidimensional and imperfect. May’s wounds showed more acutely in her behaviors and attitude; Zach stewed quietly, letting his emotions sleep out more passive-aggressively. When they met, their connection could heal or further break them, or maybe both.

Lawson’s writing captivated me. I sobbed out loud for the last twenty percent of the story. THE LUCKY ONES is the kind of book I love most, a realistic story that takes me away with characters who feel like people, not a writer’s creation. I know I’ll reread THE LUCKY ONES, because once wasn’t enough.

I can’t wait to see what Lawson writes next, she’s an automatic preorder.

This book was incredible.
I cried, more times than I can tell you. I FELT for each of those involved in this story, as well as each an every person involved ever in a school shooting. It's not just the tragedy that occurs, but all the moments before and after.
Read this book, definitely.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

I was drawn into the story, and I loved the characters. I love that this adresses a really important topic: school shootings. I thought it was well written and I could visualize the whole story.

So why the mixed feelings? I didn't quite see why May was having such a difficult time, yet it seemed everyone else has moved on for the most part. Did they move on too easily? I had a disconnect with this. Otherwise, it was an excellent book.

Thank you to the publisher and net galley for the ARC which did not impact my review.

While it was refreshing to read a book where the teenagers actually speak like teenagers, that was really the best part of this-I see why it should have been impactful but kind of meh-book.

Stories of school shootings always pull at my heart strings. Such a sad thing that’s happening these days in our society. Was interesting to see the perspective of the boy whose mother is the shooters defense attorney and how that changes his life.

I really am so happy that I was able to read this book, in 1999 I was a high school senior, after columbine, it was the first time I looked at classmates with fear that something similar could happen, and in the 20 years since, with all of the shootings that have happened, and now watching my son who adores everything Army who wears camouflage regularly go through being taunted that he's going to grow up to be a school shooter, it's always been on the back of my mind.

I liked that the author took the time to "go there" and not so much as focus on the shooting, but the after, what happens afterwards to the people that are involved? I do wish we could have seen the trial, and some of the after of the after, an epilogue of sorts, but I loved how the subject matter was written, tastefully. It was so easy to get absorbed in the alternating points of views. Some authors have trouble separating two separate views, especially of different sexes, but she did it well, and it was easy to separate them. The only problem I had was that from the start, names were dropped, the first chapter started talking about characters that hadn't been introduced yet, and I got a little lost, but once I learned who everyone was, and they were introduced in the book as an actual character vs a name, I was okay with all of it.

great book, well written, thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to read this!

Initial Impressions: I had never heard of Liz Lawson until I saw all of the hype for The Lucky Ones on Twitter. After reading the summary and a few ARC reviews, I knew I was going to love it. I'm not a huge fan of feel-good stories, but I am always ready to read empowering, passionate, inclusive stories that truly teach teenagers a valuable lesson. Just a few pages in and I can see its potential: Lawson has a true passion for standing up against gun violence, making her writing valuable, concise, and touching. I already feel sympathy for the characters and all of the victims in the world we live in. I look forward to reading the rest of The Lucky Ones!

Opinions: The Lucky Ones touched my heart far more than I would've expected. As an American expat, I didn't expect to be affected by this, but it was all too real. The whole point of Young/New Adult is to express and prepare readers for the 'teenage experience' (first love, sexuality/gender identity, school pressures, family drama, etc), and unfortunately, The Lucky Ones is the teenage experience for far too many young adults. As a young reader, writer, and citizen, The Lucky Ones spoke to me about ethics, emotions, and lively morals. This book calls for a lot of thinking and consideration of said elements, but that does not take away from its significance and allusiveness. I strongly suggest you read The Lucky Ones no matter your lifestyle, nationality, or experiences.

My Favourite Thing: The Lucky Ones was a slap in the face. Liz Lawson wrote a masterpiece regarding all elements of the book: plot/conflict, characters, themes, even the writing itself. This was an enjoyable, thought-provoking, and memorable read as a whole, but since I must pick out a preferred element, I'd say the characters. Lawson created an epic scenario full of angst, guilt, fear, and pride with her characters and their dreadful situation. It was very easy to connect to the two protagonists, May and Zach, as they were young, naïve, and suffering. The character's realistic traits made the story richer and more personal.
My Least Favourite Thing: There isn't much I would change about The Lucky Ones except its pace. I understand that the flow contributes to the angst and fear, but as a reader, it was not an attractive quality. The middle of the story, where the plot is calming down and it is more about the character's inner struggles, is especially banal. Otherwise, 5/5 stars!

Recommended For and Similar Reads: The Lucky Ones is an active, emotional, inspiring read for mature teenagers. While I believe everybody should read it for its empowering themes, I understand that activism isn't everybody's cup of tea. If you read and enjoyed The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, you should read The Lucky Ones!

This YA book is intense and heart-wrenching. It starts one year after a school shooting and follows two characters: May, who lost her twin brother in the attack, and Zach, who’s life has been hell since his mom took on being the Defense Attorney of the shooter. May has just started going back to school after struggling with her intense grief and guilt. When she meets Zach, she starts to feel things for the first time again. It follows both of their healing journeys. This was an amazing book that was compulsively readable.