The Lucky Ones

May survived a school shooting but suffered the loss of her twin brother in the tragedy. A year later, she still hates herself for hiding in that closet. She knows people expect her to have dealt with it, but she can’t. She’s tried, but she just can’t. She has so much guilt and anguish over that day and the few days before it, and it’s too late to fix it. Surprisingly, she agrees to go to a band audition with her best friend Lucy. There she meets Zach, who seems like he might get it, and her. As the son of the defense attorney for the shooter, he’s the last one likely to help, but May needs saving, and he just might be her last hope.

Like Jennifer Brown’s The Hate List, The Lucky Ones takes a close look at the shattered lives left behind and what it means to be a survivor of a school shooting. Heart-breaking and poignantly beautiful, this one goes straight for the gut as May wrenches with her guilt for her self-perceived part in the event. Told in alternating chapters and painfully brutal honesty, this story is hope in the darkness of some of the worst events in human history.