The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas 3.5 stars rounded up

[Karin]

3.5 stars

This is a very strong debut novel. I can see why this has been a best seller and so many people love it, but, perhaps because I have read so many rave reviews that it was difficult to live up to the hype, it wasn’t a 5 star book for me. The best things about this novel is that Starr is a likable protagonist and it does a good job of letting readers see another side to news stories where cops kill unarmed people, particularly when there is the added factor of racism and cops protecting their own. I’ve known for most of my life that you can’t trust the news to get things as accurately as you would like, but it can be hard to separate fact from fiction in the news.

The voice of the POV was good, and many of the characters were well drawn out, but a few felt more cliché and two dimensional. A few times the dialogue felt forced in a similar way to many police dramas (not the exact same way, of course, but in police dramas you often see TV cops having dialogues that explain procedures or other things that there is no way real cops would ever talk.) Thomas avoided some of the pitfalls of Picoult’s Small Great Things by not trying to add in too many extra problems and issues to Starr’s life and thinking than could realistically fit into a novel.

Angie Thomas has talent, and I look forward to reading more novels by her as I am sure her writing will grow and develop.