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The Hate U Give (The Hate U Give, #1)

Angie Thomas

Start date: April 1, 2019

Finish date: April 30, 2019

Discussion: Book of the Month

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What Members Thought

Apr 17, 2020 Of Butterflies & Books rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This was such a emotional-filled rollercoaster and I loved every second of it. I absolutely love Star. Angie Thomas gives such life, love, and realness to the way she writes her characters and the situations they’re going through that really makes you think long and hard. I can’t wait to read more of her wolds. She’s truly inspiring.

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Aug 29, 2017 Jasmine rated it it was amazing

I have so much respect for Angie Thomas and the strength it must have taken to write this book. The Hate U Give is the most important and relevant book I've read this year, and I'm so pleased it's getting such well-deserved praise and hype. As a white person, I'm so happy that I read it because it gave me really important insight into something I only knew so much about.

The story revolves around Starr Carter, a teenager who lives in Garden Heights (a black neighbourhood in which poverty, crime a I have so much respect for Angie Thomas and the strength it must have taken to write this book. The Hate U Give is the most important and relevant book I've read this year, and I'm so pleased it's getting such well-deserved praise and hype. As a white person, I'm so happy that I read it because it gave me really important insight into something I only knew so much about.

The story revolves around Starr Carter, a teenager who lives in Garden Heights (a black neighbourhood in which poverty, crime and gangs are high) and goes to a predominately white-kid school. Starr witnesses her friend Khalil being fatally shot by a policeman, he was unarmed and didn't do anything wrong. Soon after her neighbourhood is overwhelmed by riots and violence, in which she and her family get caught up. The novel is an enthralling mix of anger, love and fighting for justice. Starr has to decide if she can speak up for Khalil's life, the life so unfairly taken from him. She was a really interesting character, especially in the way she presented herself differently in the eyes of either her white friends or "Ghetto" neighbourhood and family, and in how she dealt with witnessing her best friends death. Angie Thomas presents fascinating and honest insights into what it's like to grow up as an African American in similar neighbourhoods to Garden Heights, common white perspectives and, most of all, the justice any of us should want for lives taken so wrongly, wastefully and unnecessarily.

I will tell anyone and everyone to read this book. Whether you're black, white, yellow. We're all human and we must fight what's happening in this world, this world that should have "progressed" more than it has. Black Lives Matter. Every single life matters, but too often, as Angie Thomas writes, people including Emmett Till, Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin (it kills me how many more people there are) are thrown aside like they don't matter at all. This is why we have to continue to do the right thing and to speak up against those who are way behind where the rest of us are. Even if that's just reading this book and talking about it.

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Dec 20, 2017 Celia Buell (semi hiatus) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: written-by-a-woman, young-adult, strong-women, favorites, realistic-fiction, family, poc-characters, america, poc-author, woc-author

With so many overlapping stories and such accurate realism and relevancy, The Hate U Give is honestly amazing. Starr Carter is a very real and very powerful character, and as the reader, one who's going to stick with me for a long time.

Put in Starr's situation, I don't know what I would do. If I was the sole witness to the shooting of my best friend, would I be able to speak out? Living in the suburbs, sometimes I feel so ignorant about Chicago, or any problems happening in the city. I don't un With so many overlapping stories and such accurate realism and relevancy, The Hate U Give is honestly amazing. Starr Carter is a very real and very powerful character, and as the reader, one who's going to stick with me for a long time.

Put in Starr's situation, I don't know what I would do. If I was the sole witness to the shooting of my best friend, would I be able to speak out? Living in the suburbs, sometimes I feel so ignorant about Chicago, or any problems happening in the city. I don't understand a lot of the racism problems that people living in Chicago proper, but this book helped me to do just that on some levels. I want to learn more about the gang problems and how I can help, from an outsider's prospective.

One thing that I loved about this book was how in depth Angie Thomas gets with each and every one of her characters. I love how Seven deals with all the struggles in both of his families and how DeVante works to get out of the gangster lifestyle. I love how Seven and Kenya try to protect their mother and how much Starr's mother's side of the family loves Seven even though they could rightly hate him for being alive. I love Uncle Carlos's moral development, and the way that Starr's parents treat her and Seven as adults. I love Chris and how devoted he is to Starr and to learning from his mistakes. And I absolutely love Maya and how she grows into her own and separates herself from Hailey along with Starr. All of the different stories absolutely fit in to the bigger picture, and at the same time they take you into every character's life and build relationships between all of them, and with these characters the reader builds strong relationships as well.

Living in the suburbs, the parts about Chris, Hailey, and Maya's houses felt kind of exaggerated. However, since I live in a close suburb of Chicago, I don't actually know for sure if the further suburbs are much better-off than we are. I guess they probably are, because sometimes I see huge houses when I go up to Northbrook, or sometimes even Evanston. However, if Angie Thomas was exaggerating the suburbs, I understand why she did it: to show the contrast between Starr's two worlds.

The idea of this story, while probably not novel, is new to me, and it's something I absolutely love. I know I will definitely be reading this again. ...more

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