Hi! It’s day two of being a book blogger and I finished a book last night so it’s about time for my first review! 

First I want to say a little about my personal rating system (because potentially unpopular opinion incoming). I only give five stars to books I LOVE love love, so those are pretty rare. I give four stars to books I really like but maybe for some reason I didn’t feel as strongly about, but four stars still means I was a big fan of a book. I give three stars to books I… like. Just like. Which means, I still usually think they’re pretty good, but maybe I didn’t have that total immersion into the book that I wanted, or maybe there were aspects of the writing that bothered me, or something like that. I give two stars to books that I finished but were just okay. And finally, the lowly one star goes to books that I really can’t stand.

Anyway, this review is about The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. 

This book is SO popular right now, and it’s been getting RAVE reviews from basically everyone. It has a 4.61 rating on Goodreads right now, which is pretty dang good. However (and here’s the unpopular opinion)… this was only a 3 to 3.5 star read for me. I liked this book, I really did, and I enjoyed reading it! I just didn’t LOVE love it, ya know?

I bought this book awhile ago because of the high praise. I read a couple of chapters and then never picked it up again. I was reinspired when it was picked for the September YA book for the Diverse Books Club (find them on Instagram or Goodreads). This time I was determined to commit, and I’m glad I did. 

The Hate U Give follows 16-year-old Starr Carter after she witnesses her childhood friend Khalil get murdered by a cop. This is an all too familiar story at this time in history, and the narrative is unfortunately not an unfamiliar one. Before the shooting, Starr bounces back and forth between her two mostly separate lives with ease, living in the poorer mostly minority neighborhood of Garden Heights while going to a fancy school in a rich mostly white suburb. After Khalil’s death, race issues move to the forefront of Starr’s life. As the only witness to the murder, Starr has to decide if and when to speak out when the media justifies Khalil’s death by calling him a drug dealer and a thug.

This book captures the complicated feelings of a scared teen (really a kid) thrown into a fight for justice for a murder she witnessed. This book definitely opened my eyes to different aspects of white privilege and racism. It was enlightening reading about how Starr learns to use her voice and stand up for what she knows is right.

The Hate U Give deals with more than just police brutality against black people. It also deals with what it’s like to live in a neighborhood where you have to deal with gang violence and drugs on a regular basis, and it isn’t uncommon to hear gunshots. This book tackles extremely heavy issues in a way that is digestible and makes Starr’s struggle (and the Black Lives Matter struggle) relatable for every reader.

However…. and here is where my opinion may be controversial. I didn’t love the writing. I felt that the prose was choppy and heavy on dialogue. In my opinion, the characters had so much promise but were more caricatures than fully developed individuals, which made me struggle to really connect with them. The writing was too straightforward and lacked any subtlety that would make you think. Everything felt super BAM, in your face. Maybe that is because it was YA? I’m not sure. I also think the book was way too long and could have been cut in half in length. These things distracted me from the story and made the book less enjoyable for me.

Okay here is a picture of the book with my cat to calm you down in case you got really mad at anything I said in the previous paragraph. 

So… there you have it. I liked this book but I didn’t love it. I understand why it’s so popular and important. I’m actually very excited for the movie, which I think I will like more than the book. 

Also here is another picture I took for bookstagram but rejected. I tried to do one of those super cute “flat-lays” or whatever they’re called with a succulent but wtf, how do people make pictures of books on a bed look so good? Mine ended up looking awkward because of the height difference between book and overwhelmingly huge looking succulent but hey, this is my blog so I’m posting it anyway. 

Have you read The Hate U Give? Did you like it? Let me know what you think! You can leave a comment (!!! which nobody has done yet) or find me on Instagram.