BOOK REVIEW THE HATE U GIVE BY ANGIE THOMAS

Hey, everyone! I hope y'all are having a
great day, and today I'll be reviewing The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. The Hate U Give is Angie Thomas's debut novel, and it's been
garnering a lot of critical and commercial success. So critics have been giving it so
much praise, but it's also been topping the New York Times bestselling list for
young adult fiction. So it's, you know, it's been everywhere.

There's been a lot of
buzz. And in my opinion, the most remarkable thing about this book is the
fact that it's basically a response to the Black Lives Matter movement. So The
Hate U Give follows our protagonist named Starr. She's in the passenger seat of her
black, male friend's car when they're pulled over by a white cop, and this
exchange leaves her black, male friend dead on the street and Starr just
emotionally scarred.

And what follows this incident is a media whirlwind, but
also an engaging and complicated experience regarding family and
neighbors and friends and so much more. Angie Thomas touches on a lot of
different subjects in this book and she does so very effectively. And this book
is frustrating and painful, but also funny and moving. It's frustrating and
heartbreaking to read because you're reading about these situations in which
there is just blatant discrimination and such a glaringly obvious lack of justice,
and what amplifies this frustration and this heartbreak is the fact that this is
barely even fiction.

It's highly reflective of real life and that's the
rub. Because you can turn the last page of this book and close it and you don't
feel relief. You might feel galvanized or inspired or pained, but you can't brush
off the story like it's fantasy because it's not. It's realistic fiction, with a
heavy emphasis on the first word.

There's a lot of really good stuff an Angie
Thomas's debut novel. Most obviously, there's an excellent discussion on race
and socio-economic background. Starr lives in an underprivileged, predominantly
black neighborhood, but goes to a private school in a different neighborhood where
most of the students are predominantly wealthy and white. She struggles with
portraying two different versions of herself depending on the two different
audiences and she talks about how she doesn't want those two spheres to
interfere with each other.

Less obvious is Thomas's great portrayal of
family. There are countless YA. Novels where the parents are absent,
family's hardly ever mentioned, but in this one, Starr's family is such an
important component both in Starr's real life but also just in the novel itself.
Another thing Angie Thomas does well is her depiction of a specific subculture.
She incorporates slang and songs and gangs in a way that feels very real and
very immersive. It reminds me just a little bit of the unapologetic way Junot
Diaz incorporates his experience into his writing.

The last thing I want to
mention is humor. As you might expect, this is a pretty dark book for a lot of the
pages, but there are also really great lines sprinkled throughout. This book is
painful, sure, but it's not hopeless, and I. Like that.

So like I said, there are a lot
of great things going on in this book, but it's not flawless. It makes me a
little scared to criticize this book because I don't want anyone, for even a
second, to misconstrue any of my criticism as any degree of disdain for
the novel's complete message. Because that's not the case at all. But I think I
would be remiss to skirt around the things I didn't like for the sake of
appearances.

So things I wasn't crazy about. Firstly, the writing, the writing
style. The writing is too explicit for my taste,
and I don't mean explicit like vulgar, parental advisory, I mean explicit as in
everything is spelled out for the reader so clearly. There's nothing left for the
reader to infer because we're told everything.

The writing is so
definitively explicative, it can honestly be a little exhausting to read. In terms
of the old adage, "show verses tell," I think Angie Thomas does a lot of telling. And I
do love the message and the concept of this book, but I remember while I was
reading, it wouldn't be uncommon for me to think, "I wonder how much better this
story could be in the hands of a different author."
The other main element of the novel that I didn't really enjoy was the pacing. I
feel like the pacing was notably inconsistent, with some sections being
really dragged out, but then some important events only getting a
paragraph of attention.

One example of a main event in the book is a trial
hearing and the trial hearing is a really really big deal
for both Starr and also for this entire movement. But it'll appear and then
disappear in the storyline, which made me want a better structured timeline and a
more consistent frame of reference. This book is a pretty long book, and long
books don't necessarily have to feel long, but this one did. And I feel like
that could've been fixed if the pacing has been adjusted.

So the
writing style and the pacing--those are things I just wasn't a really big fan of.
But do those flaws even really matter in the grand scheme of things? I'm
compelled to say that they don't, because the significance of this book, the fact
that it was written, the fact that it's published, and the fact that it's
successful--the fact that it exists, you know-- that significance outweighs subpar
writing or a fluctuating pace. This book is meaningful to so many people and it
can do a lot to educate someone, to inspire someone, to impact someone, and
isn't that the importance of literature to begin with? I don't know. I'm not
particularly sure that I enjoyed reading The Hate U Give in terms of emotion or
entertainment, but at the same time, I. Don't doubt for a second that this book
is worth reading.

To my knowledge, it's the only YA novel out there that is
about this topic. If you know of any other YA novels that are about the
Black Lives Matter movement or about police brutality, let me know. But in the
moment that I'm recording this, this is the only book like it, and that's worth
so much. So ultimately, I didn't really love this book, but I love what it stands for,
and because of that, I would recommend it to everyone.

It's not perfect, but it's
important, and maybe that's worth more in the long run. Bow I'm going to go into a
quick spoiler section about The Hate U. Give by Angie Thomas, so if you haven't
read this book and you don't want to be spoiled,
I would advise leaving in 3... 2...

1... Bye. I think I knew from the beginning
that Officer One-Fifteen wasn't going to be convicted, because they never are. But
still, I was hoping.

I was--I was hoping that there would be justice. But I
suppose if there had been justice, I would have questioned Angie Thomas's decision to,
you know, change the ending so that it didn't reflect real life anymore. So she
stayed true to how these trials always go, but it was still upsetting. It's never
not upsetting, you know? I didn't cry throughout the entire book until the
last few pages when Starr begins listing all these victims
who lost their lives to police brutality.

That was remarkably effective, extremely
provocative, and just a really really strong conclusion, I thought. Unrelated,
but regarding writing, there were two passages in this book that I highlighted
when I was reading it on my Nook because I just didn't like these sentences for
some reason. I just really really despised them so much that I highlighted
them. One is in response to Starr saying "love you" for the first time to Chris over
text and she writes, "It's as foreign as a Spanish word I haven't learned yet." "It's
as foreign as a Spanish word I haven't learned yet." I dislike this simile so
much, I had to stop reading and highlight it so that I could add it in my review.
"It's as foreign as a Spanish word I haven't learned yet." I was not here for that.
The other passage that I highlighted because I didn't like it was an example
of how many needlessly explicative I feel like Angie Thomas's writing is
sometimes.

She writes, "One-Fifteen's father is his voice, but I'm Khalil's. The only way people
will know his side of the story is if I. Speak out." That's literally one of the
main conflicts of the entire novel--is Starr struggling with this decision to
tell the truth and speak out and share Khalil's side of the story. I just don't
think that needed to be explicitly stated for the reader to know what's at stake.

I
just wish the writing would have given the reader a little bit more credit to
take away these central themes on their own. To counterbalance those two examples, though,
I have a couple of lines that I really enjoyed. The first one is when Starr's
doing an interview and she says, "It seems like they always talk about what he may
have said, what he may have done, what he may have not done. I didn't know a dead
person could be charged with his own murder, you know?" When I read that, I put
my Nook down and I was like, "She did that.

She went there." Yas, queen. And then
there was another one that I didn't highlight but I loved it so much I still
remember it, but I don't know it verbatim. It was something along the lines of: I
hear his laugh and his laughs makes me laugh, so I know it's Chris. It was
something really simple like that, but it was just such a cute sentiment.

Something
I really loved about this book is the way that Angie Thomas incorporates a lot
of conversations about race that can seem maybe a little tangential
but are so important to me. The conversation where Chris asks about a
black people having "weird" names--that conversation was so important to me.
Literally every conversation with Haley being her stupid, obnoxious,
self-righteous self. Haley was just so symbolic of how some people can be so
blind to their own crimes. I wish Maya had been better developed because she
honestly kind of seemed like a throwaway ally that existed just to make
Starr more validated in her anger against Haley.

But Haley's dialogue was always so
intentionally self-exonerating, I was really impressed by how Angie Thomas
just captured this really common sentiment any time Haley talked. Like, my
college roommate has a friend from back home and her friend likes to call me
Ling Ling. And they laugh like it's just a joke, but I guess they don't understand
the entitlement that comes with making jokes like that. I felt exactly like Maya
when she was upset that Haley asked her whether she ate a cat for Thanksgiving,
and I felt exactly like Starr who was angry when Haley made that fried
chicken joke on the basketball court.

People like Haley make Maya and Starr
feel like they're not allowed to be offended, oh, because it was just a joke.
The thing is the people like Haley are not in a position to be saying things
like that or to be cracking jokes like that, and it's infuriating because so
many people are going to look at the situation and think, "Oh, why are you
overreacting? Can't you take a joke? You're so
sensitive. You're such a social justice warrior," and sure, I can be sensitive, and
sure, I can be outspokenly liberal, but those traits aren't an excuse for someone
to put the blame on me or Maya or Starr when Haley's the one being ignorant. Just
the fact that I launched into a rant like this, I think, shows how important Angie
Thomas's book is. She incorporates so many conversations like that in this
book that I just never see anywhere else in YA and I appreciate it so much.
One scene that really really hurt my heart was when Big Mav is forced to the
ground by the cops in front of his children.

And that scene is just so
startling because Big Mav is such a huge figure, both in Starr's life, but also in
this neighborhood, you know. He has so much power, he has so much authority, and he
demands so much respect from everyone around him. But that instantly
dissipates the second a cop comes onto the scene, because then, anything
could be interpreted as a cause for a bullet. That just destroys me.

One decision
that I thought was super intentional and super--just excellent, it was an excellent
choice--was Angie Thomas's decision to make Starr's uncle a cop. The fact that her uncle was a cop added such a unique
element of tension to the rest of the conflict. I probably had so much more
to say about this book but that's all I. Have notes written for.

Please, please let
me know what you thought about The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. It's really
such an important book and there are so many seeds for discussion, so I'd really
really love to hear your thoughts on this book or on the topics that this book
brings up. I sound like such an English teacher for saying that, but I'm not
kidding, this book is just so fertile for conversation. Thanks so much for
watching, I hope y'all have a fantastic day, and happy reading.

Goodbye! [Outro music: "Summer Moments" by Del].