The Hate U Give Book Review

Opinion piece: The Hate U Give Book Review

“Sometimes you can do everything right and things will go wrong . The key is to never stop doing right. ” By: Gaia Nikolov

The Hate U Give is a young adult novel written by Angie Thomas in 2017 about a girl named Starr who witnesses her friend Khalil get shot by a police officer. This was Angie Thomas’ first book, which tells the story from the point of view of the main character, witness and friend of the victim, and how she felt after the incident.

It also explains how Starr reacted to things differently, depending on the environment, like how she lived in a poor, black neighbourhood, and went to a private high school which was 45 minutes away. She would act normally at her home, but when she was at her school, she didn’t want to appear as the stereotypical “angry, black girl” , so she changed her behaviour to make her like the other girls.

In my opinion, the book was very good at creating tension but at some points it became confusing, for example a character would be mentioned out of nowhere, and would only be seen or developed afterwards. This made it hard to keep up with the story, however it kept in line with the spoken and written style of a teenager, which I believe was the intention. It is based on the shooting of Oscar Grant, a 22 year old AfricanAmerican man who was also shot by a police officer in 2009 for no reason, and her reaction was writing this book, expressing her feelings about the situation.

This book, even though it is fictional, can help us understand more about the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement and racism, for example, giving scenarios that would or even have happened in real life.

Many people who like modernday young adult novels will enjoy this book, and even if you are not really a fan of teen fiction or young adult fiction, I recommend this book because it can really help understand one of the biggest problems in the world, and its impact on people’s lives: racism.