Book Review The Hate U Give

*Music playing* Hi everyone! Today I want to talk about
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. This is a young adult contemporary novel that was published earlier this year to A. LOT of hype. It was billed as a book that
was influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement and because of that I had my
eye on it.

I was finally able to read it a couple
weeks ago during the BookTubeAThon and I. Had some high expectations due to the
amount of hype and I'm happy to say that this book lived up to those expectations.
I thought it was fantastic. I'm going to attempt to talk about why that is but
there's just so much to talk about with this book that there's no way I will be
able to cover every aspect of it. The book is about 16-year-old Starr Carter.

She is split between two worlds. She has one side of her life that takes place in
Garden Heights. It's the poor black neighborhood where she has grown up and where her family lives. The other world is the mostly white fancy prep school
that she attends.

The book opens with Starr attending a party in Garden Heights
where she runs into her childhood best friend Khalil. After things get violent
at the party, she and Khalil leave in his car and they're pulled over by a white
cop. The result of this is Khalil being shot and killed by the cop and Starr
being the witness to this event. Khalil was an unarmed teenager and this, of
course, incites a lot of anger in the Garden Heights community and Starr has to decide if she's going to risk bringing these two worlds of hers clashing
together in order to speak up on behalf of Khalil since he can no longer speak
for himself.

I thought this book was almost perfect. I loved the plot line. I
loved how it tackled a lot of intense, hard-hitting topics, and I really loved
the characters. I loved Starr as a main character.

I thought she had guts but she
was also realistic because she was afraid of what might
happen. She wanted to support her community and support Khalil and speak
out for the injustices that she'd seen but as a 16-year-old girl she was
also afraid of what might happen to her. I thought she was very reasonable. I also
really enjoyed reading about Starr's interactions with her siblings and her
parents.

For once we have a young adult novel where the parents are present and
they are great, well-written characters. Starr and her siblings and her parents
and her friends and other people that she interacts with in this story are so
well fleshed out and I was really impressed by that. It is big. It's about
450 pages so there is a lot of space to delve into these characters and really
understand their motivations and where they're coming from, but it never once
did it really drag for me.

Angie Thomas used these fantastic
characters that she had and she made them address some really intense topics
either personally or with other characters and although at times I did
feel like it was a bit heavy-handed, like there was a bit more tell than show, I do
think that's an aspect of the fact that this book is young adult and it could be
reaching out to a really young audience. This book is not really written for me.
I'm 25, I'm not 14 or 15 so some of these things I sort of understood maybe on a
bigger level than what this book was really explaining, but I do think it's
really well done for somebody who is a bit younger and might not have had as
much exposure to a lot of the issues that this book is addressing and still
making it understandable for them while maybe going a bit overboard depending on who that teenager is and how much they already know. I felt a ton of emotion
reading this book. I was happy but I.

Would also be very angry at times. I had
so much empathy for these characters and also there was some really satisfactory
moments but everything was still rooted in reality, which makes this book great
because although you want things to work out in this book the realistic side of
it is that it won't. Nothing is going to end neatly wrapped up in, you know, tied up in a bow. It's going to have some intense moments that just
don't pan out how you want them to for your characters.

One theme that I
particularly liked in this book was the idea of not judging someone on just one
small aspect of them or their personality. Things are said about Khalil
in the media and, of course, a lot of people rush to judge him. This is
something that relates particularly to Khalil but it also relates to other
people in Starr's life and I think it makes you reflect on what you know about
this person and really consider where they come from and what they've been
through and how much better they're trying to be... Or maybe not how much
better they're trying to be.

I thought it was a really nice message that was sort
of interwoven throughout the book for a lot of the different characters that
we do focus so well on. I already kind of mentioned how I felt that certain
moments of this could be a bit more telly than showy in terms of really
spelling things out and how that's both a positive and a negative. There were two
other things that I wanted to mention that I didn't particularly love; thought they might- could've been improved on a little bit. The first was that
certain sections did feel a little drawn out.

I think bits could have been shaved
off and actually maybe put in other sections that I felt were a little short
and it also did have a few of those clich young adult lines. There weren't
many of them, thank goodness, but there were a few; a couple lines that I felt
kind of were forced or just awkward and I wish they could have been cut. I think
it wouldn't have taken anything away from the story or maybe just have them rephrased
because some lines are just so clich in YA. If this book gets people to
empathize more or stand up for what they believe in next time a situation like
this happens again, I think the book is doing something amazing because it's
helping people become better and think about their actions and consider what
they can do to make the world a better place.

This is why books should exist
because they make us question what we know and try to make us better people or
at least try to help us become better people. And when
that book can be geared towards a younger audience and influence a younger
generation that has so much more time to become better people and expand their
horizons and just become more aware of what is happening around them... That's
good! (Chuckle) That might be a lot of weight to be putting on one book but that's how great
I think it was. It has that potential to influence younger people who are 13, 14,
15 and make them question what they're seeing on the media or maybe speak up
when somebody is saying something and they're hurting other people by doing so
or just empathizing with someone that they maybe don't know as well and trying
to see things from their perspective.

If you can't already tell I do want to give
this book five stars. This book wasn't perfect but it was powerful and it had a
lot to say and it was done with well-written characters and an interesting,
engaging plot that tackled some really tough topics. If you have read The Hate
U Give definitely tell me what you thought of it down below. There's so many
different things that are tackled in this book.

It's so hard to talk about
them all in this review so if there's something I didn't mention that you want
to mention, definitely do so down below. As always all of our links are in the
doobly-doo. Check those out if you feel so inclined. Thank you guys so much for
watching and I'll see you later.

*Music playing*.