The book, That’s Not What Happened by Kody Keplinger would be categorized in the Young-Adult section in genres. The theme of this book primarilized on truth and memory. In the story, Lee, the main character suffers major trauma from the school shooting that occured. Six survived and nine died tragically. With the inaccurate perception of her bestfriend Sarah's death, Lee struggled whether or not she should reveal the actual truth of what had happened. Further onto the storyline of this book, Lee and the rest of the survivors of the shooting had gained enough courage to confront all of their different perspectives of the event and led to how this novel views people overcoming their traumatic experiences and challenges of private and public versions of their story. After finishing this book, my reaction was very happy. To describe the book, I would say that it was memorable. The reason for this is because during the story it left stressful moments where I felt concerned for the characters. The author's opinion of this book was to give the survivors a chance to speak up for themselves. As to this, I would like to agree with the author because I also believe that the unheard should be noticed even after three years from the incident. Even though it may have been forever ago since the shooting happened in the novel, the people that had not went through the horrible state would not relate to the six survivors who actually underwent it. The possibilities in the book suggest trauma and healing of the individuals. In the story, the six survivors did not know each other until the shooting. As time passes by, they all get together to revive one another making all of their own trauma as one to heal. Although it is a greatly impacting book, it leaves out the shooter’s perspective. Even so this illustrates the minds and thoughts of the survivors, the writer had left out an important detail which was the shooter's thoughts. For the shooter was not mentioned in any way about their opinion, we cannot know why and how they created the scene. Relating this novel to larger issues, I think that it impacted me into thinking about if this is how victims of mass shootings had felt after. To summarize, this novel overall would be a nice book to read when you are in a mood for a teenager related book connecting to their battle with a crucial life and guilt. It was interesting reading this book and I would like to recommend this to other students!
Siwoo K.
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