Seeing my peers, all of us teenagers, organize and advocate for something we believed in made me so proud of my community.

I had the opportunity to give a modified version of this speech at my school's walkout to recognize victims of gun violence in American schools. I was angry: angry that lockdown drills had become so normal that shutting down class was seen not as a horror but as a chance to miss schoolwork, angry that so many people had cried for change and nothing changed, angry that the news and the public had seen and forgotten again, and again, and again. I was a junior in high school when the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, occurred. Liz Lawson's debut novel explores the consequences of school shootings, too often forgotten after the cameras leave and the news quiets, on young survivors. A chance meeting unites the two, and together they grieve, learn, and heal. For Zach, social isolation and family problems abound when his mother, a lawyer, decides to defend the school shooter. For May, attending a new high school not even a year after her twin brother Jordan was killed in the band classroom where she hid feels impossible.

In The Lucky Ones, teenagers May and Zach struggle with the aftermath of a school shooting. 'I want to say the exact right thing, the thing that will take away all her pain and her grief and her guilt, but I know those words don't exist.' Receiving this galley does not impact my opinion of the book. Thank you to Random House for providing me with an advanced reader copy for review.

The Lucky Ones by Liz Lawson