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A review by srirachareadsalot
Shooter by Caroline Pignat
4.0
3.5/5 stars!
CW: school shootings, gun violence, death, murder, PTSD, stalking
I at a young age participated in a classic nerd activity known as "Battle of the Books". I don't know if this is a universal book reader term, or if it's like a Canada thing so I'll explain. You essentially memorize book titles, their summaries, authors and other books the author has written, and go head to head against other schools for a competition to the death.
One category that was always focused on was the Red Maple nominees, which is basically the YA fiction award in Canada. As this book was one of the nominations, it went around EVERYWHERE. The book had like a one-year hold list(which was stupid since the voting was in like a month from the time my school library got it)
Therefore since my patience and attention span lasts longer than the time it took me to write to this point( I kid you not, I went pee right after I wrote the first sentence in the second paragraph-- tmi, yeah ok I see that...)I shrugged this book off and told myself it was probably shit and that no one liked it anyway. Well, guess what? Not a single person I knew disliked this book when they read it. And so that's the story of how my stubborn petty ass failed to read a book for four years because I couldn't read a book after the crowd as my twelve-year-old self, that was BRUTAL.
So, when I saw this at my high school library(where ironically fewer people are reading-- however somewhat understandable since we're all crying into our homework instead) I could access this book quite easily. Now I didn't LOVE it, but in this book's defence, I think I would've loved this book a lot more 4 years ago, but alas I share the realization I talk about a lot in my reviews; my reading tastes have changed because I'm getting old and cranky ;(
To start positively, I actually enjoyed the cast of characters a lot. We have Isabella; the Asian adopted "It Girl" who isn't as happy with her life as one would think, Alice a girl who has to live her life perfectly and maturely to take care of her younger autistic brother Noah, Xander a boy with a tensioned past with Isabella because of his stalker-like behaviour, and Hogan the "bad kid" who's behaviour is mostly resulted from trauma in his past. I can't personally speak for the autism representation(you could probably find an own-voices review if necessary)-- but personally, it felt well-done and non-forced. Noah was actually one of my favourite characters. His autism was something that added deeply the story and how the other characters interacted with him was really interesting.
These characters are surprisingly well fleshed out. Their inter-relationships with each other and well developed and their reaction to this trauma is unique, and realistic to their characters. They are multi-faceted and are definitely not one dimensional.
To add, multi-media books that are unconventional are rarely my cup of tea. I like your simple normal story but this book's media helped develop the story and the characters. For example, we have text messages, journal entries, letters, homework, and worksheets that added so much to the story and characters.
Unfortunately the book was not without fault; specifically the "twist"-- notice the quotations, because it was barely a twist. It fed into the stereotypes that exist with school shooters and it honestly angered me. I wish it could've been someone else, to just further represent that people are not one-dimensional and their thoughts are often SO different from their dialogue and look. What this book did, failed to show that, and fed into this belief that school shooters all look and are exactly the same. With these such strong and amazing characters I was expecting it to be ANYONE else but it wasn't :(
The book also added so suddenly. I wish we could've seen so much more of how this event affected our main characters and the rest of the student body and faculty. School shootings are not simply about the event itself, but how we recover after the fact and I think we didn't get enough to see of that.
I also wish we had seen the effect that gun violence itself had on the community. This book notably takes place in Canada(I think specifically some non-descript place in Ontario). A huge topic of discussion in the US regarding school shootings and even shootings, in general, is the prevalence of guns and the easy access that both minors and general public have, and this is one of the biggest reasons to blame for the spikes of shootings in the US. What can we say for a country where gun use is restricted and normally well controlled? Living in Canada for my whole life, I have never witnessed or heard of a mass shooting in Canada in my lifetime and shootings I have heard of(e.g. the Parliament Shootings 2014) are often small and few and far in between. The only mass school shooting I've heard of is the Polytechnic Massacre at U of Montreal, but that happened in the 1980s. The story often referenced that it's setting was Canada so the lack of this conversation and topic to be discussed was a bit disappointing for me.
Overall, I enjoyed Shooter, but I think it fell flat for me in certain respects. I would still recommend it if you are looking for a good book about school shootings.
CW: school shootings, gun violence, death, murder, PTSD, stalking
I at a young age participated in a classic nerd activity known as "Battle of the Books". I don't know if this is a universal book reader term, or if it's like a Canada thing so I'll explain. You essentially memorize book titles, their summaries, authors and other books the author has written, and go head to head against other schools for a competition to the death.
One category that was always focused on was the Red Maple nominees, which is basically the YA fiction award in Canada. As this book was one of the nominations, it went around EVERYWHERE. The book had like a one-year hold list(which was stupid since the voting was in like a month from the time my school library got it)
Therefore since my patience and attention span lasts longer than the time it took me to write to this point( I kid you not, I went pee right after I wrote the first sentence in the second paragraph-- tmi, yeah ok I see that...)I shrugged this book off and told myself it was probably shit and that no one liked it anyway. Well, guess what? Not a single person I knew disliked this book when they read it. And so that's the story of how my stubborn petty ass failed to read a book for four years because I couldn't read a book after the crowd as my twelve-year-old self, that was BRUTAL.
So, when I saw this at my high school library(where ironically fewer people are reading-- however somewhat understandable since we're all crying into our homework instead) I could access this book quite easily. Now I didn't LOVE it, but in this book's defence, I think I would've loved this book a lot more 4 years ago, but alas I share the realization I talk about a lot in my reviews; my reading tastes have changed because I'm getting old and cranky ;(
To start positively, I actually enjoyed the cast of characters a lot. We have Isabella; the Asian adopted "It Girl" who isn't as happy with her life as one would think, Alice a girl who has to live her life perfectly and maturely to take care of her younger autistic brother Noah, Xander a boy with a tensioned past with Isabella because of his stalker-like behaviour, and Hogan the "bad kid" who's behaviour is mostly resulted from trauma in his past. I can't personally speak for the autism representation(you could probably find an own-voices review if necessary)-- but personally, it felt well-done and non-forced. Noah was actually one of my favourite characters. His autism was something that added deeply the story and how the other characters interacted with him was really interesting.
These characters are surprisingly well fleshed out. Their inter-relationships with each other and well developed and their reaction to this trauma is unique, and realistic to their characters. They are multi-faceted and are definitely not one dimensional.
To add, multi-media books that are unconventional are rarely my cup of tea. I like your simple normal story but this book's media helped develop the story and the characters. For example, we have text messages, journal entries, letters, homework, and worksheets that added so much to the story and characters.
Unfortunately the book was not without fault; specifically the "twist"-- notice the quotations, because it was barely a twist. It fed into the stereotypes that exist with school shooters and it honestly angered me. I wish it could've been someone else, to just further represent that people are not one-dimensional and their thoughts are often SO different from their dialogue and look. What this book did, failed to show that, and fed into this belief that school shooters all look and are exactly the same. With these such strong and amazing characters I was expecting it to be ANYONE else but it wasn't :(
The book also added so suddenly. I wish we could've seen so much more of how this event affected our main characters and the rest of the student body and faculty. School shootings are not simply about the event itself, but how we recover after the fact and I think we didn't get enough to see of that.
I also wish we had seen the effect that gun violence itself had on the community. This book notably takes place in Canada(I think specifically some non-descript place in Ontario). A huge topic of discussion in the US regarding school shootings and even shootings, in general, is the prevalence of guns and the easy access that both minors and general public have, and this is one of the biggest reasons to blame for the spikes of shootings in the US. What can we say for a country where gun use is restricted and normally well controlled? Living in Canada for my whole life, I have never witnessed or heard of a mass shooting in Canada in my lifetime and shootings I have heard of(e.g. the Parliament Shootings 2014) are often small and few and far in between. The only mass school shooting I've heard of is the Polytechnic Massacre at U of Montreal, but that happened in the 1980s. The story often referenced that it's setting was Canada so the lack of this conversation and topic to be discussed was a bit disappointing for me.
Overall, I enjoyed Shooter, but I think it fell flat for me in certain respects. I would still recommend it if you are looking for a good book about school shootings.