Question 1: What was your initial reaction to The Hate U Give?

[Pixie and Maria]

(This is part of our Instagram Question series, but we want to chat about this stuff here, too!)

So when you first started reading "The Hate U Give," what was your initial reaction? Did it hook you immediately, or did it take some time for you to get into the book?

[Pixie and Maria]

Maria here. I'll go first:

So, true confession time--I don't really care for contemporary YA fiction. (There...I said it.) It's not really my jam. I tend to find it overly shmaltzy and saccharine.

But "The Hate U Give" was a totally different beast. The writing and language sucked me in immediately, and by about p. 40, I couldn't put it down!