Just Finished Reading Four Three Two One by Courtney C. Stevens

Usually when I visit my local public library (Millhopper on NW 43rd Street) I browse around the cart that contains "Play-Around" audiobooks. They are basically listen-only MP3-like small cartridges containing an entire book, with me only having to supply my own AAA battery and earphones.  The other day I ran across the 2018 young adult novel Four Three Two One, by Courtney C. Stevens, in this format and checked it out.  I just finished it and, although it probably wasn't targeted at my age group, I still came away from it thinking that it had a universal message that applies to everyone...

Golden, or "Go", Jennings is a seventeen-year-old survivor of a New York City bus bombing the summer before that killed nineteen...including the young psychopathic bomber...and spared only four, including Go.  The other survivors are her boyfriend Chandler from Kentucky, Rudy...who had flirted with her just before the disaster, and Caroline, the bomber's girlfriend.  One of the first-responders who helped save the four has started a college scholarship drive for them, had the destroyed bus rebuilt from its ruins, and is staging a reunion in New York to celebrate them and their lives.  The story line, told mainly from Go's point of view, examines how each of the four survivors struggle with the torment of guilt, not only of surviving the attack when others didn't, but also of their common believe that each of them in their own way contributed to the disaster and are therefore unforgivable.  It is the ongoing interaction...much of it in conflict...between these four and others that sets the theme of the story.  And Go's new friend Vicky gives a classic lesson on how to be supportive of survivors in situations like this.  It's a timely tale, very appropriate in this sad time of public shootings in schools and workplaces, and addresses the all-too-often occurrence of suicide on the part of survivors.  A good read, I recommend it...