Okay, this review is probably going to be short and sweet since it has been so long since I read this book.What I DO remember about this book is that it was SO good! It will make you angry, it will make you sad, it will open your eyes and enlighten you. Starr is such an amazing character. She has to go through things that no kid should have to go through. But she's so strong and handles it so well, despite the strong (likely) possibility of an unfavorable outcome.I loved the family dynamic in this book. I loved how much Starr's family all loved and cared for each other. It's so refreshing to see a full, functional family for a change.Another thing I really liked about this book was the sense of community in Garden Heights. I loved all the interactions between the different people and seeing how much they all loved their community. That's not something I recall seeing in really any books and I enjoyed it.A couple of things I remember wanting to talk about regarding this book:-While I was reading this book, I remember thinking that Sekani was an odd name. And I love that this was actually addressed in the book and that it totally put me in my place. I don't remember exactly what was said, but I remember I liked it. But I feel like I can't really say anything about anyone's name because I feel like Cyra is an odd name.-I was so so so glad when Starr stopped putting up with Hailey's crap. She was a really rotten friend and it made me sad to think that Starr had to be a different person around her white friends at school.Overall, this book was fantastic! I was a bit late to the party on reading this one, but I would definitely recommend it if you are also fashionably late to this party. It is powerful and deserves every single ounce of hype that it gets and MORE!

Wow, what a great book! This book is so timely in the wake of all the shootings of young black men and the inability of law enforcement to train their personnel to respond differently when making routine stops and for the anger members in the community feel when charges are not brought up against the officers.This is also a coming of age book about the protagonist in the story: Starr, a 16 year old African American girl who is trying to straddle two worlds: the working class, tight knit, all black neighborhood where literally "everybody knows your name" and the upper middle class, predominantly white high school her parents send her and her two brothers to.Boy, did this book ring a bell, park itself in my psyche and stayed awhile to visit! I could relate to all of the characters: in some ways Starr's family is my family: as black parents how do we insure our kids have a good education and yet keep them in touch with their cultural heritage, and why, as black parents do we have to make these kind of choices? I too have made the speech to our kids about what to do if you're stopped by the police, we too are tired and frustrated with the needless deaths of young African American men.The story very realistically depicts how Starr struggles with the death of her close friend Khalil, what it means to her and her community that she is the only eye witness. The author fully captures what DuBois called the double consciousness that many blacks still have to live in America. She has Starr deal with micro aggression from friends, navigating having a white boyfriend, internalized negative stereotypes about blacks, are you betraying your family and/or your community when you move out of the "hood"? and then the everyday, "regular" messiness of family life.Great fantastic debut novel with awesome characters, lots and lots of depths and nuances of the complexity of what it means to grow up black in 21st century America. I look forward to reading books by this author in the future.

I have heard a lot about this book, I really wanted to buy the book but at the time I didn't have the money and it was a bit more than I was really to pay for an ebook. So I figured I would borrow from the library got on the waiting list and I was like maybe 3rd in line to get it. That for me was too long. Then I saw that a school district banned this book and that sent up the flags that I needed to get my hands on this book. Why would a school district ban a book called The Hate U Give? I jumped to Amazon and ordered it that same day when I got the book in I was so flipping happy. I totally wished I would have bought the signed copy on the author's website.Thanks Katy ISD because of you making the news about banning this book I had to have it!Now when I started the book I knew I was hooked but knew I would not have been able to finish it in one sitting, it was going to take me a couple of days. I didn't know how deep this book was until I was a few pages in. This author hit so much truth that I would recommend people read it.I felt this book was real in so many ways! You have friends who are fake and do not truly understand what you stand for or believe in. You have to wear two faces sometimes because you do have to worry if people would like the "real" you. Death; impacts all those who knew the person and yet when justice is not served properly it becomes a bigger impact. This is just a few of those real things.We are introduced to Starr who lives in a so called bad neighborhood yet her momma wanted better for her and her brothers as far as schooling went and moved her to a prep school. Yet Starr knows that she can't act like people would think she would act if they knew where she lived.We see how Starr has to act different and you can really tell that the author did a good job with the characters feelings and how she handled problems that came her way.When Starr ends up in a car with her best friend Khalil and sees him die her whole world changes. She can truly see how the justice system works and how people truly act in a tragedy. She will lose friends and gain closer to a friend. Her eyes are way opened to it all, though her mother and father tried to protect her.Starr ends up fighting for Khalil and letting the truth come to light, she doesn't want his name dragged through the streets as a thug because he was not one. This book was on point in more than one way. I felt the author did a damn good job with it ALL! When I do my top ten books for the month this book will be number 1. This book was raw, it was heartbreaking, it was real, it had the truth in it.Characters were flipping amazing, the situations that were in the book were on point, the plot was a steady and went at a decent pace. I liked all the characters but I will say this I loved Starr's mom and dad. The way she could read them and how real her parents were was awesome!I want to say more but I just know I will be giving it all away. PICK UP THIS BOOK, OWN THIS BOOK!

This is the story of 16-year-old Starr, a girl who witnesses her life-long friend get killed by a police officer while unarmed. She balances between two worlds while the murder makes national news: the one where she lives surrounded by non-traditional families and neighbors who’ve seen it all and gangbangers and business owners in a black community filled with people whose choices are never easy, and the one where she goes to a mostly-white private school at which she becomes a completely different version of herself so nobody knows about her home world. But it’s so much more than that. And that’s why I am going to ask people who can’t relate to this story—particularly white people—to read it as soon as they possibly can.The reason I believe reading books by people who aren’t your and your experience’s doppelgänger is important is because it allows us to pluck at the threads of truth about other peoples’ lives, experiences, secrets at our own pace and in our own heads as we go along (note: I am white). We get to know them, see them, emotionally connect with them. Read enough of these stories, and we become able to see the real people in our world who are represented by those characters. We become more empathetic to and more understanding of their situations, even when they are so vastly different from our own that our knee-jerk reactions to their real-life words/actions/decisions tend to be denial, rejection. A disbelief because it doesn’t seem right or doesn’t feel comfortable.Reading these stories connects us in a way our world needs right now, and THUG is the book we should all be reading.

I truly think everyone should read this. In this first novel, the author has written a book from a black teen’s perspective, which parallels the shooting of an unarmed black teenager, as has happened and caused riots here in the USA. Teens can be difficult, and no one in this story is perfect, by any means. But, there are many sides to any story, and this is a thought-filled book that I think people need to read to hear about the black experience in poor, violent, gang-ridden sections of large cities. Through the eyes of a teen, as well as the skillful writing of this new African American author, I believe there is a lot of perspective to be gained. I know many won’t even pick it up because they don’t want to know, but isn’t that part of the problem? Just because someone has not personally had to deal with this, doesn’t mean they should close their eyes and pretend there’s nothing wrong. Enlighten yourself and think about the title, from Malcolm X’s own words. Are you subtly, hiddenly, or openly passing on the hate you learned, whether you are black or white. We need to examine our own conscience’s to see what we are contributing to our society, possibly what each of us could do to improve racial justice and equality in our country.