Book Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Book: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Genre: YA Contemporary
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆  ☆ 

We are discussing this highly hyped and buzzed book for book club this week. Everyone is a little nervous I think. It's a hot and emotional topic. I have no idea if we are all on the same page or not! (Lol, same page... )

Anyway, this story is about our girl who in the opening pages of the book witnesses her friend getting killed by the cop that pulled them over. Killed for no reason. There was no threat and nothing that happened that should have made the cop nervous.

But now it's her word against his. Which, as we all know, are not good odds.

And so then we get immersed into this girl's life and all the not so fun things she has to deal with. How she is torn between her "black" life and her "white"life. (Not that she is even a little white, but that she goes to a white school and has to act like a different person there... or thinks she has to.) How her family is not your normal typical family. How she has to deal with the fear of the gang leader causing constant problems. How she is in love with a white dude, who has just as hard a time being accepted by her family has a black dude might  in a white family.

So, she struggles to get the courage to testify against the cop, which she does and of course... he gets let off. (I guess that could be a spoiler, but I'm pretty sure we all know what this book is about!) And then the riots start.

It's pretty scary actually. And the family is very affected. So sad all the crap they have to go through. But I love the relationship between her parents. One of my favorite things of the book actually, and it shows how these kids who deal with all this scary stuff, how they get through it somehow. With the support of great family and neighbors.

Bottom line it's a book written to address the black lives matter movement. And it does so in a pretty good eye opening way without being overly in your face. There were times when I felt like I was getting sat down and lectured to, or taught a lesson. But I guess for the most part I was okay with that.

I still do wish I would have gotten to know the boy better... I needed to be more connected to him to feel the pain of this incident more. The girl was hard for me to get to know too, I don't know why. But she grew on me.

So I enjoyed the book for the most part. The language was harsh. The subject hard. The story good. The writing just okay. The characters borderline. The buzz was huge and now I'm glad I know what it was all about!