Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of The Lucky Ones by Liz Lawson.

May is starting school again after an unsuccessful attempt at homeschooling. But May isn't quite ready to enter the halls of another school after the trauma of the school shooting that took her twin brother the previous year. Understandably, May is angry, easily triggered, and out for vengeance anywhere she can find it.

Zach is also dreading this school year. His dad has retreated into his bedroom, leaving Zach to care for his younger sister. His mother chose to defend the school shooter in court, leaving her kids vulnerable to cruelty and attacks.

During a rock band rehearsal, Zach and May find themselves drawn to each other, neither knowing who the other is. But despite the attraction and affection they feel toward each other, can they get past the horrible chasm between them? And will either of them be able to heal and one day feel like themselves again?

Ah, the plight of the beautiful, broken, teen. John Green would be proud. But in seriousness, I didn't mind it. I think it was full of enough meaty content, and horrifying issues that modern teens HAVE had to deal with, that the beautiful, broken teen trope was almost more of a stage setter. It was written well, and showed respect for not only a serious social problem we're facing, but also for the teens it's written for.

This was a deeply touching novel. I found the characters to be believable and relatable, especially in this day and age when their experiences are too common. My heart ached for the tragedy May experienced, but I was rooting for her growth the entire story.

The Lucky Ones by Liz Lawson, 352 pages. Delacorte Press (Random House), 2020. $19. LGBTQIA
Language: R (269 swears, 124 “f”); Mature Content: PG13; Violence: PG13
BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
May should have been in the room during the shooting that killed her twin brother, but, instead, she hid in the band closet and listened to their screams. Zach begged his mom not to take the case to defend the school shooter but became a social pariah anyway. What else is there when all May and Zach can feel is anger?
Tragedies aren’t just for Shakespeare, and real life can be as scary as a Stephen King novel. Lawson puts readers into the aftermath of a school shooting, highlighting the hate and confusion that occurs after disaster strikes. As readers follow the lives of May, Zach, their families, their friends, and their peers at school, we discover together the healing power of forgiveness -- the importance of forgiving others and forgiving ourselves -- even if the road is long and arduous. The mature content rating is for illegal activity, underage drinking, and mention of drugs; the violence rating is for blood, gun use, and murder.
Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

I went into this book not really expecting much. I have read many books that deal with school shooting that I think have done a fantastic job. The Lucky Ones may be a contender in my young adult school shoot recommendation books. School shootings have been all to common in the United States since the Columbine shooting in 1999 and many books talk about what happens before and during but it’s a rarity to read about the after. What happens after the shooting? Many students are left with questions of how did they get so lucky or why are they so lucky? These are the hard questions that you don’t see dealt with in young adult stories. I think that Lawson has done an amazing job with tackling the psychological aftermath of the survivors. The book is told in dual perspectives of May and Zach. When you have a parent that has the unfortunate job of being a lawyer you become the unfortunate victim of your parent’s decisions. Zach has the unfortunate luck of being the child of the lawyer that has to defend the school shooters. You can imagine how well that plays out in high school. May is a survivor of the school shooting and deals with the emotional issues that come along with it. And that’s how our story unfolds. Thank you Netgalley and publisher Delacorte Press for letting me read this book in advance.

The Lucky Ones
4 stars

This book discusses what happens to the people that survive a school shooting, the leftovers or lucky ones. From dealing with survivors guilt to dealing with life continuing on. It’s a really dark but it’s really well written. I loved that the story was told through two points of views so you get a full picture of what a community might deal with. I would definitely recommend this book to others with trigger warnings.

Purchased this YA/middle grade novel for my middle school library. Superb character development, elegant world building, and compelling plotting.

This book was brilliant and beautiful. May's story will stick with me forever.

The author took a tragedy and really pulled from the aftermath of such ugliness to bring us a story of hope.

If you like to cry, look no further than this book. It will make you feel things and it will stay with you for a long time. It was poignant, heart breaking, yet also quite lovely. It IS dealing with the aftermath of a school shooting so make sure to know that going in and check trigger warnings before picking it up. Be careful handing this out to young adult readers without having a conversation with them about it first, as it could trigger anxiety. Overall, highly recommend.

The Lucky Ones is an emotionally charged and hauntingly poignant novel that follows of the aftermath of a school shooting and the lives of those affected by it.

They call May the lucky one. She is the sole survivor of a school shooting that takes the lives of her twin brother, fellow classmates, and her favorite teacher. But May doesn’t feel lucky. She’s angry. She’s heartbroken. And she’s lost.

When May meets Zach, she sees in him a kindred spirit and they immediately click. They find themselves feeling both invisible and under the spotlight, only good for pity or anger. Together, they navigate the pain and loss around them, and find the courage to dismantle the walls they’ve built around themselves to let others in.

This novel focuses on some heavy subjects – such as mental illness, death, school shootings, trauma, drug and alcohol use, PTSD and parent neglect – but it’s also full of hope and little moments of joy. It’s easy to look at school shootings and focus solely on the event and what preceded it. Rather, The Lucky Ones examines what happens after, and how devastating these events are on the family, friends, and community of those lost.

This is a touching debut and I want to thank the author for bringing a gentle, yet realistic, voice to these stories without dramatizing them.

A timely, important, heart-wrenching read. Especially in our current political climate, I think this book is a great lesson in empathy, understanding, forgiveness, and healing.

Great story and loved the romance. Loved the cast of characters and how the story came to be. Great story and I would read this author again.

I had a tough time getting into this book and couldn't connect with the protagonists. I think mainly because the situation as so unique that I couldn't quite relate

This was an utterly sobering and gut-wrenching read. I knew it would be intense going in since it's about a girl who survives a school-shooting. It layers the trauma with twists of agony, so you'll finish up with your heart just that little bit broken. It's very much about grief and guilt, but also it's a journey towards healing and trying to keep participating in life when that's so so hard.

May is such an angry and brutal person, and it's totally understandable. I felt broken for her. Her brother was murdered in the shooting, but before that he was the "favourite" so she's always felt ignored and unwanted. Zach is your soft squishy boy, now hated in school because his mum is a lawyer defending the shooter. I did find him harder to care about as he was awful to his father (struggling with depression) and his pov on his mother's job was "you ruined my life taking the case". He came across so selfish and he only had ONE paragraph to be called out for his attitude. That wasn't enough change for me. And both May and Zach had incredible supportive best friends who were their life rafts, which was beautiful, but the friendships felt sadly one-way. Zach barely did anything for Conner ever. May's dependancy on Lucy made total sense since she was having an absolute breakdown, but who was supporting Lucy? I just would've liked to see both main characters reach outside themselves. (Again, May's pov made perfect sense. Like seriously, that girl was in deep trauma and it was negligent and horrible of her parents to just leave her to suffer.)

An introspective read about grief and guilt, layered with intense emotions. This story felt so real. My country doesn't face anything like what the US does with school shootings and I always feel gut-sick knowing it's so many kids everyday reality over there.

I shouldn't have read this because I really do not like reading about school shootings. The novel alternates between the perspectives of May, whose twin brother Jordan was a victim of a school shooting, and Zach, whose mother is the attorney representing the shooter. Both characters are developed, intriguing, and - as expected - highly emotional. For very different reasons, they are both dealing with some terrible issues.

There is a lot to like about this novel if one can get in the head space to read about this topic. It isn't easy. The one aspect I did not love is the romance component. I found this distracting and would so much rather have seen a friendship develop.

May is a survivor. But she doesn't feel like one. She feels angry. And lost. And alone. Eleven months after the school shooting that killed her twin brother, May still doesn't know why she was the only one to walk out of the band room that day. No one gets what she went through--no one saw and heard what she did. No one can possibly understand how it feels to be her.

Young adult novels can sometimes be the most insightful pieces of literature and this one packs a punch about teenagers coping after a school shooting. These two kids have a lot going on- May locked herself in a storage closet when a shooter came into her classroom, while Zach's mother is the lawyer who agreed to defend the shooter--so you have a lot of trauma that is present within the pages and debut author Liz Lawson does a great job constructing a story that talks about the aftermath of a shocking event, one that isn't usually explored.

Read this story after you read books like "Time Bomb" by Joelle Charrboneau and "This is How it Ends" by Marieke Nijkamp, or if you want to dive into the emotions and trauma that surrounds people who deal with school shooting events.

Very good book. Would recommend................................................................................................................................................................................

This was a heart wrenching book that was not an easy read. I knew that going in given the subject matter but what I wasn't prepared for was how hard this book would hit me. It is a moving story about moving through grief/loss and dealing with trauma and guilt.
I found this hard to get into but once i got into it, I read it quite quickly, I had a hard time with the character initially but ended up being sucked into the story. I liked the author's writing style and would be interested to see her future novels.
I would recommend this for folks who like the YA approach to more challenging subject matter and are willing to stick with books that don't immediately pull you in.

An emotional look into the aftermath of a tragic school shooting, Lawson has something both special and perhaps too relatable to the American public. May is still reeling nearly one year later, as the anniversary and her return to in-person schooling approach. Mostly going unparented at home, she takes out some of her anger tagging the house & property of the defense lawyer who took on the case of the shooter. She happens to be the mother of Zach who suffers in his own way, a target of his peers who sneer at the audacity of his mom. Zach and May are in drama class together but officially meet at a band audition a few days later when they are separately dragged out by friends. There is a instant spark between them but they’re still ignorant of the other’s identity, she the twin sister of one of the boys who died and he the son of a monster. May realizes it first but by then she’s in too deep, her crush forcing her to keep quiet about the stress she put in Zach’s family through her crass notes and vandalism. When the school hosts a memorial for those lost in the shooting, May has to confront her lies, anger, and heartbreak and start to truly repair and care for her self.

I've tried to read this book and each time I'm unable to get very far. Maybe I'm not in the right head space or I just and not that interested in whats going on. I hope to give it another try in a year or so and I like it better. It has Dear Evan Hanson vibes, and I loved hat book. So hopefully it's just me and not the book. but for now I'm going to have to fall because it is falling flat for me.