The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Review)

Date Finished: May 11, 2018

Page Count: 444

Genre: Realistic Fiction 

            Surprise, surprise, I was pleasantly surprised with this book. I must admit, I was a bit unsure about the content of this book and the only reason I picked it up was because my English teacher recommended it, but dang, was this ever good! In a sense it didn’t feel like realistic fiction but rather fiction set in our world. I know that’s the definition of realistic fiction but trust me, it’s something else as I’ve never described a realistic fiction book that way before now have I?

            Before diving into the review, yes this is still going to be short (at least I hope so, last time I said that it was still over one thousand words) as I’m in the home stretch right now and still have tons of projects dumped onto me. This is also not going to be as explicit as my normal reviews in case you were wondering. No, I will not tell you that Kai Sen dies in the very first sentence and make a big deal about it (but his death was a big deal in the book), I’ll just go over the big concepts I enjoyed and why so I can get this over with and go back to spending time doing homework (or with my mother if I can find where she is right now).

            First off, Chris was a godsend. I’ve been reading these things for a whole year and the only already established relationships so far have been married couples and minor characters. Giving the main character a boyfriend at first, and one she not 1000% happy with is great, and I wish more authors would do that. Watching Starr and Chris interact was just wonderful, and I hate to admit it, some of my favorite parts in the book. The romance wasn’t a big portion of the plot nor a small portion; it was just the right amount you’d expect in a book centered around a sixteen-year-old and contributed to the story in all the right ways. Thank you Thomas for giving me a Chris in my life (the world needs more like him).

            In addition, Starr had a strong, clear, colorful voice. You could get a strong sense of her character from reading the story and it was consistent, changing in the right situations around the right people. As for my opinion on her voice, yeah I don’t like it when people cuss (its trite and often makes people seem like their vocabulary is severely limited), but other than that it was very entertaining and a joy to read. It even felt like the diction a sixteen-year-old black girl would make in this decade, full of sass and passion. Part of the reason I like the book so much just has to do with the energetic and lively diction that helped to give this book some feeling.

            The final thing I’ll mention here is the world building. See I was expecting the character to be bland, the plot mediocre, the world super predictable and not worth caring about. Surprise, surprise, the plot takes some time for things to heat up with the disagreement on the results of the court case and stuff, but man, was there a whole lot of world building that happened in all that time. See, Thomas would drop these little pieces of information as the story progressed that didn’t make sense but as more piece were dropped the puzzle started to make sense. You learn about how Starr’s family functions, how her neighborhood functions, how her school functions, how her friends functions, how her family functions, and how the universe functions. Okay, that last one is a joke, but it may as well be true. Thomas does such a good job of explain Starr’s world down to the electrons, protons and neutrons that I couldn’t help but fall in love with it all. It didn’t help that she would bring things up at just the right time so that the story wasn’t conflicted nor did Starr’s character get compromised. The world building was what won me over essentially, just fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. I’m just amazed at all the world building was done in just 444 pages without being straight up exposition, high level stuff Thomas.

            And there you have it, a clean review that goes over everything I enjoyed about the book in less than a thousand words. You should totally go read the book by the way; it has great characters, great relationships, and great world building. I also loved the themes of community and identity which are highly prominent in the book and make it deep and a real rollercoaster for the emotions. Forgive me for thinking this book was going to be garbage if you read my last review as this book is far from garbage. It’s well thought out, has deep messages, strong characters and knows exactly what it’s going (not wants, going) to do on this earth. A book that has a goal is one of the best books you can find so if that doesn’t make you want to read it, then you must not be in high school or not like realistic fiction or even not like how some people act as though there are problems in the world pertaining to racisms and stuff (people are like that, sometimes I’m like that). If so then don’t read the book but everyone else go for it! Peace out y’all and happy mother’s day mothers!