Review: The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

• Genre: YA Fiction
• Number of Pages: 464
• Rating: 3/5 stars
• Review: I finally read this book after all of the hype! I’m sure you’ve heard about it, but I’ll recap just in case. In The Hate U Give, Starr Carter finds herself caught between two different worlds as she lives in Garden Heights, a poor black neighborhood, but attends Williamson Prep, a school overwhelmingly attended by rich white kids. On the way home from a party one night, Starr is the only person witness the death of her childhood best friend Khalil, who was shot by a policeman for no reason. Throughout the novel, Starr learns to find her voice and fight injustice, even through the difficulty and pressure of being the only witness. Overall, I liked The Hate U Give, but I had a somewhat mixed review. What I did like was the authentic voices and personalities of Thomas’s characters; the characters felt very real and likeable and listening to the audiobook version made this read even more fun. I also appreciated Thomas capturing a variety of perspectives regarding the issue of racism. Because Angie Thomas is an African-American author, I thought that she provided an authentic perspective of the complicated emotions that black communities today can experience. I thought she did a nice job of portraying tensions that still exist between black and white people, but she did so in a tactful way that wouldn’t alienate her audience, no matter what race they belong to. I felt that The Hate U Give dealt with these issues in an authentic manner, and personally I thought that I came away from the book feeling more educated and more empathetic. So I liked the overall message of the book, but I didn’t like a few technical things. First, honestly I think the book is way too long; there were a few subplots that I didn’t think were necessary and a few scenes that dragged on too long. Also, the teenage girl voice came off pretty cheesy to me at the very beginning, but I was able to settle into it and it didn’t bug me much as I read on. I’m not sure if I’d read this book again because of those things, but I think it’s a valuable book that everyone should read at least once!

*contains moderate violence, moderate sexuality, and severe language