This isn’t for the faint-hearted. The way the author depicts grieving in this novel is a true punch to the gut. May simply cannot get over the way her brother Jordan was shot and killed during a school shooting while she hid in the closet and did nothing. Feelings of guilt plague her, but she’s also consumed with anger and vengeance. She thinks that nobody can understand her pain until she meets Zach.

Zach has become a social pariah at his school the moment his lawyer mother took a case that left everyone speechless.

Zach and May become kindred spirits until they each realize who they really are. Zach’s mother is defending the shooter that killed May’s brother. And for months May has been rendering Zach’s family life hell by secretly vandalizing their property and leaving threatening letters in their mailbox.

If you’re hoping for a light YA read with romance speckled throughout, then this isn’t the book for you. Sure, this book has the hopes of a blossoming romance, but it isn’t the heart of the novel. The real purpose of this book is to show the reality of surviving a school shooting and how even when you’re the “lucky ones” to survive your new normal is just as terrible as being dead. A must-read for anyone at any age to see just how prominent and damaging active shooters have become in both schools and other locations.

*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

<b>An important book.</b>

Lawson exposes the effects of a school shooting in a painstakingly raw way—the PTSD, the guilt, the emotional detachment, and the arduous path survivors must take to return to society and fit in anew.

Zach was a wonderful character whom I felt attached to immediately.

Mat was more difficult to like, so broken and bitter.

Wow, what a heart wrenching, emotionally, and absolutely important book to read! While this is not my normal genre, it is one of my favorite reads this year. The heart put into this book, sweeps out of the pages and you can feel it enter your soul. I think it should be a mandatory read for parents, students, teachers, or all school faculty! It was so emotional, but also made sure to go through it all, to a point where you see some hope shining through! A book that will have an everlasting effect on me! Grab your copy today, read it, and you will weep, but it’s an important one!
Will make sure I buzz it up! Hope to see a television show or movie depicting it, because I think it is that important!!

The Lucky Ones can be described in one word: Breathtaking.

I was fortunate to read an Advanced Reader Copy and was absolutely taken in with the incredible writing of Liz Lawson and her main POV's Zach and May. Her crisp dialogue pulled emotional punches that jump you straight into the characters lives in this novel about the survivors of a school shooting: the luck ones. The story told isn't about how fortunate those that survived feel, but what was left behind to keep their memory. How May forces her way back to life after her twin was killed. This is a story about learning how to live again and move through grief and has a complex plot that weaves the lives of Zach and May. What adds to this page turner is the two very different lives the main characters live with great suspense elements taking the reader on a journey to find out how they are connected and the secret behind the party that hit before the tragic event.

This incredible novel is an important one. The author doesn't take the topic lightly, but I also appreciate that the violence and experience of the shooting wasn't told on the page. This was done very respectfully. Teens will love the voice, the growth, and put themselves into the story. A must read!

This was a very emotional book. This book is about the people left behind in the aftermath of a tragedy. Telling the story through two POVs allows the reader to really see the emotional trauma shared by people, even those who were not even at the school during the shooting.
This story is not for the lighthearted. It covers a lot of intense and difficult topics. It covers PTSD, bullying, anxiety, and many other emotional and physical aspects of being "the lucky ones" who made it out alive. But are they really living?

A very well done book. Despite the heavy subject matter it manages not to be bogged down in darkness. The depiction of the complicated aspects of fallout from an event like this is exceptionally good, avoiding a lot of easy pitfalls. I was a little disappointed in adding the shooter’s “reason,” it felt like an unneeded kick to May.

WOW... wow.. wow.. this book!

This book was heavy, intense, emotional, and rips to your core in the best way. This book is extremely important in every way. I feel like we have way to many school shootings today and give Liz extreme props for writing a book about such tough topic.

We follow two teens who are struggling with the aftermath of a school shooting. These two teens are forever connected to one another and struggle/grow in different ways. Trauma has impacted these two teens and they find one another with the power of connection. It's beautiful how truly resistant kids can be.... I see it every day in my line of work.

Liz, you are quite the talented writer and broke my heart! I fell in love with May and Zach's story and recommend to all readers to join this impeccable journey.

4 stars!!

Huge thank you to Random House/Delacorte Press for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

Publication date: 4/7/20
Published to GR: 12/14/19

The Lucky Ones. Are they the survivors of the school shooting that rocked towns and families to their core? How can you <i>really</i> call them Lucky, though? Because survival is half the battle.

For Maya, who lost her twin brother in the shooting, her version of “coping” is destructive. Nothing can get close to her and panic seeps from every fiber of her being.

For Zach, who’s lawyer mother is defending the school shooter, his life has taken a drastic turn - no one will speak to him but his best friend Conor, his girlfriend dumped him and his family life is awful.

When Zach and Maya’s worlds collide, on a random night at a bad practices — before each knows the others truths, there’s an unspeakable connection, a bond that’s formed - a lucky break. And from that moment on, this novel becomes something so much more.

This one was such a tough read for me — tough because Lawson does such a fantastic job of describing and making you <b>feel</b> EVERYTHING— the pain, the heartache, the raw emotions, throughout this entire novel. I cried more than a few times. Because all of this, it’s all so real and it all hits so close to home. And it’s terrible that it does but we have to talk about it and the people that are left behind. Lawson’s prose is poignant and the words she chose matter.

Thank you, Liz Lawson, for writing a novel that matters.

I ended up DNFing this book around the 50% mark for a number of reasons. The first was the amount of language and the second was that it was slow. This book started out promising but my hopes were let down quickly. I understand that the characters were grieving, but they were still wallowing in self-pity and woe-is-me.
All and all, I'm a bit disappointed by this book because I was hoping for better.
Rating: 2 Stars
Content: No Rating
*I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. All thoughts are my own and a positive review was not required.

I couldn’t really get into this book so I didn’t finish it. I found the characters kind of boring so it was difficult for me to get invested in the plot.

Anger, when acted upon, unleashes a destructive power that spares no one from the flames. Although, when in the middle of the fire, some of us can't get past the mentality that it is only happening to us. And that is May. She lost her twin in a school shooting, but her parents lost a son, his friends lost a best buddy. A year later, she's still angry.
For me, I wanted more emotions to be stirred ... I didn't feel what the protagonist felt. I wanted more perspective, more insight and background from other characters. It was an egotistical portrayal of grief for 90% of the book, and that felt wrong. I needed more of an ending, a denouement that asked May to consider how it felt for others.

This book was great considering it is the author's debut effort. I reserve 5 stars for books I just can't put down, and The Lucky Ones fell just short of that for me. The characters felt to me to be just a bit underdeveloped, especially the adults, who are generally portrayed as two-dimensional workaholics that have no clue what their children are dealing with. This is true of both parents and school administrators and althoughsome of that is to be expected given that the book is narrated by the teenagers, I think even that perspective could have given more depth to the portrayal of the adults throughout the book.

Even with minor flaws, this is still an excellent book and it is one that I recommend strongly. I'll be sure to check our future works by this author.

I receive an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book was intense! May is working hard to move on after her brother died in a school shooting, but she can't really move on because she blames herself.
She meets Zach, who she then finds out is the son of the woman working the trial for the shooter. But she is drawn to Zach and gives him a chance and that chance helps her find meaning in life again.
May was having a really hard time moving past everything that had happened. She should have really asked for help and especially not have kept the letters from the shooter from her family. She let them consume her and that made her healing last longer and harder.
I don't know what it is like to go through a school shooting and lose someone close to you. The author did a great job of depicting all of the characters feelings. I just felt like May could have healed sooner if she just would have let more people help her.
I did like her relationship with her friends and her developing relationship with Zach.
This one was hard to put down, a good read.

The Lucky Ones brings us into May’s life after she survived a school shooting. She struggles with life after tragedy and questions if living is really what she wants. Her twin brother died in the shooting and the lawyer defending the shooter angers May.

May meets Zach, who seems nice enough, except he is the son of the lawyer. May feels hate towards Zach, as she cannot believe anyone would defend the shooter. Zach assures May that he disagrees with his mom, but is that enough for May?

May struggles with anxiety and PTSD after the experience. She also feels survivor’s guilt.

The Lucky Ones is a YA novel, which connects the reader to the characters and pulls on your heartstrings, as May learns to live again. I highly recommend this novel!
I was given a copy in exchange for my honest review from NetGalley. #netgalley #TheLuckyOnes

A very emotional read, and very thought provoking. I work I the education system, and cannot fathom the thoughts and feelings you experience during and after a school shooting. Many times I found myself shaking my head, and then reflecting on what I would do in the situation. Beautifully written. 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

The Quick Cut: A teen girl struggles to move on in life after she is the survivor of a school shooting that kills her genius twin brother.

A Real Review:
Thank you to Delacorte Press for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It's genuinely frightening how much violence has injected it's way into our school system. Between incidents like Columbine and Sandy Hook, it seems as though the pain never ends as it makes its way to a new location. But what happens to the survivors? How does that process look of getting back to the typical? We see that process with the story centered around May and Zach.

May hasn't been the same since that day a classmate came into the band room and killed everyone in sight. Being the sole survivor, she has struggled with angry outbursts ever since. However, after failing to achieve in homeschooling, May is being thrown back into the school system... with everyone else that experienced that day from afar.

Zach's life has been completely upended since his mom took the case of the school shooter. Now being a pariah, he's lost his friends, girlfriend, and any semblance of happiness. Until he meets May and he finds another who understands his pain. Can these two survive the awkward connection they have to one another?

Warning: this book is dark and with good reason. However, even with the topic discussed being so gruesome, the way it is discussed is so smart and realistic. Not only do you see the pain May goes through as a survivor, but you also experience Zach's with how his life is impacted by social outcries that have nothing to do with him.

The topics discussed include depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and even PTSD. Each of these conditions is experienced by at least one character, in all its haunting realism. The journey the characters take to get back to mental health is one important today, one that needs to be seen more often.

Zach and May each have their own burdens from the school shooting. Without saying too much, they also have their own connections to each other. Seeing their personalities clash and at times comfort one another is an inspiring sight to see. In the midst of the pain, they find light that keeps them going (even if it took a little too long to get there).

A slow build to an important topic that needs more exposure today.

My rating: 4 out of 5

An effectively intense, emotional, heart wrenching, mind bending, sad, poignant, depressing debut novel shakes you to the core and making you non-stop sob, walking around with your teary red eyes and running nose.

This is not only about the school shooting, massacre and terror the perpetrator created, innocent victims who unexpectedly lost their lives, this book is about the people WHO ARE LEFT BEHIND. They could be named as “LUCKY ONES” because they didn’t die that day, right? But what if they choose to die slowly instead of instantly like the other victims, lost the most import parts of them at very same day: THEIR HOPE and THEIR LOVE OF LIVING AND CARRYING ON. This is the story of Maya who is left behind and Zach whose life changed forever when his mother decided to be lawyer of the shooter.

Maya survived that day, by hiding in a closet when the shooting started. At the very same day, she lost her friends, her favorite teacher and HER BROTHER. She is not thankful to stay alive because she lost her family who are drifting apart and having hard time to process their grief. She alienated her own friends because of her boiling anger and self-hatred. She’s expelled from her school because of her self-destructive attitudes, dumping her boyfriend. Only Lucy, ex-addict, her loyal friend knows how she feels and tries all she could to keep Maya’s head above water and help her not to get drawn.

Zach didn’t alienate people. They chose to leave him alone because they thought he was the traitor! They blamed him because his mother’s choice to defend the killer. His girlfriend dumps her and starts dating with some of his friends. People stop to talk with him. Only Conor, his only loyal friend pushes him hard to keep his chin up and stay alive against the hostility of his inner circle. He also lost his family. His father never leaves home, doing nothing, hanging out in his pajamas and his mother is never at home, fully focused on her new case. He takes care of his sister who is also traumatized because they’re threatened by vandals, spraying walls of their houses. (Guess, who is the vandal? Bingo! Maya finds a way to reflect her boiling anger.)

Maya and Zach, two victims of different circumstances meet with each other. As soon as both of them learn their identities, Maya gets volatile but at the end she cannot deny her attraction to Zach and surprisingly she starts to share her untold feelings with him that she never shared with anybody, even with Lucy.

But Maya has very big secret that she never shared with anybody and this secret can change everything and open the Pandora box about the truths of the shooting day. When this secret comes out Zach and Maya’s lives will never be the same!

This is beautiful, sad, heavy story breaks your heart several times. The author’s realistic approach and the characters’ inner fights, vulnerabilities because of the circumstances they’ve found themselves, obstacles they had to endure even though they were too young to face them are heart wrenching but objectively told without any exaggeration. I loved the honesty of the words and conclusion of the story.

I love the writing, realism, characters, approach of the author to tell how people give different reactions and handle the grief in different ways.

At some parts, the story was too heavy and suffocating but not because of the writing, it was about the subject choice. It was too much depressing and soul shaking experience for me but I still loved Maya, Zach, Lucy, Connor and the other survivors of this story. It was impossible not to feel for them.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House/Delacorte Press for sharing this emotional, fantastic ARC COPY with me in exchange my honest review.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Liz Larson for an ARC of the Lucky Ones.

This was a deep subject to read. The Lucky ones start with a school shooting. May she was one of the Lucky ones as she was in the closet in the band room when the shooter came in and killed the people in the room. Her twin brother was one of the victims. May lives a year of her life blaming herself for being a survivor she has lost all her friends at school because of the rage that is inside her. Next comes Zach he attends a different school but he looses all his friends because his mom is the attorney defending the shooter.

What Liz Larson tells in this story is something the news media leaves out in these awful events is how the survivors have to do to pick up the pieces of what is left of their life’s to continue to live. How their everyday life is no longer normal. How they have to deal with the mental stability to just survive and how to overcome the greatest lost.

It’s scary to know that this is the world we live in nowadays. Seems like every time we turn on the news somewhere in our world someone is being killed let it be shooting up a school, church and even our own Military bases.

This book. 😭 Such a heavy topic. This was both an amazing and difficult read.

Well written about an important topic. A must read - even though I struggled through it at times.

4 star rating for this deep gem.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the opportunity to read this early in exchange for an honest review!

I honestly don't know how to even talk about this book. It was dark and a lot to take in. You definitely have to be in the right mindset to read this, but it didn't disappoint on bit. It was a hard story to ready, but absolutely worth it.