THE HATE YOU GIVE BY ANGIE THOMAS|| REVIEW

Summary

The hate you give follows the main character Starr, a sixteen-year old girl who lives in a lower class neighborhood. She goes to a private school that is white dominated and she is one of the few black students. Her childhood friend Khalil is murdered by a police officer and Starr is the only witness. That’s how far I can go for a spoiler free summary.   Starr now has to decide whether to come forward as the only witness and discuss what happened or not, which could get her killed and risk her family. This could also destroy her community.

Will Starr get courage to come forward as a witness or not?

My thoughts

I enjoyed the writing style, it’s simple and I really loved that Angie did not shy away from the ‘hood’ language, which was fantastic.

This book is so realistic and it is easy to relate to the characters, because Angie portrayed them in a simple way and they are just like your normal people in your everyday life.

The familiarity of the story is so perfect and some of the events are emotional and shocking as this book is about racism. You get to ask yourself a lot of questions which is good because it is thought provoking.

It addresses a lot of situations we encounter in our everyday live i.e. how we get so judgemental about choices people make or situations people end up in. Most of the times we tend to be so quick to judge others, instead of understanding the reasons behind those situations and choices. Angie shows us that it is not a good thing to jump into conclusions about other people and judge them without necessarily knowing all the facts.

I really enjoyed the family aspect in this book. It shows the closeness of Starr’s family and how they support each other and even the community is so supportive, which I related to a lot.

I loved the title and how it ties up with the story. The title is from a quote by 2Pac and it merges so well with what the book is about. Basically, the hate you give really manifests and affect people.

These are the things you can expect from this book and why you should read it:

1. It is relevant with what happens in everyday lives and this book is informative.
2. This book is about finding your voice in situations.
3. Staying true to who you are and this is perfectly portrayed when Starr feels like she has to be someone else at school and when she is around her neighborhood. She is finding it really hard to combine these two lives.
4. I liked the way friendship is handled in this book. We see good and toxic relationships and their impacts on people and good advice’s on how to deal with them.
5. This book has all the feels LOL. It is funny, emotional, informative and thought provoking.

I picked up this book because of the hype behind it and it suffices to say that, it lived up to that hype. It’s a really good book and I genuinely recommend it if you want to know about the difficulties of race.

Rating

5/5 stars

Quotes

Sometimes you can do everything right and things will go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.

Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you are scared.

What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?

Title: The hate you give

Author: Angie Thomas

Published: February 28 2017

I hope you enjoyed this review, please leave a comment if you’ve read this book or you’re planning to.

XOXO

Sthembile