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Must Read!
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas Book Review The Hate U Give is a really good book and I think a lot of people should read it. It is about a girl named Starr who sees her best friend Khalil get shot by a police officer. The whole book is about what happens after that and how Starr deals with it. It is really sad but also really important. One thing I really liked about the book is how Starr acts different at her private school than she does at home. At school she tries to talk and act a certain way so people do not judge her. But at home she is totally different. This is called code switching and the author uses it to show how hard it is to feel like you belong in two different worlds. I thought that was a really smart way to show what Starr is going through on the inside. The title of the book also means something really deep. It comes from a Tupac quote that stands for The Hate U Give Little Infants F***s Everybody. Khalil had written about it and Starr thinks about it a lot after he dies. The author uses it to show that when people grow up around hate and unfairness it affects everyone around them too. I thought it was cool that the whole title was actually a symbol for one of the biggest themes in the book. If I had to say something bad about the book I would say that one of Starr's friends named Hailey gets kind of annoying. She says a lot of ignorant things and by the end of the book she does not really feel like a real person anymore. She just feels like a character who is there to be wrong about everything. I think the book would have been better if Hailey was a little more realistic. My favorite part of the whole book is when Starr finally decides to speak up about what happened to Khalil. For most of the book she is too scared to say anything because she does not want people to know she was there. But when she finally does speak up it feels like the whole book was leading up to that moment. It made me feel really proud of her even though she is not a real person. Overall I think The Hate U Give is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It talks about really serious stuff like racism and police brutality but it does not feel boring or like a textbook. Angie Thomas makes you actually care about the characters and what happens to them. I would tell anyone to read this book especially if they want something that makes them think.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A powerful read that will spark conversations
I read The Hate U Give as a family read-aloud with my middle school boys, listening to the audiobook while following along in the text. We paused often to talk through what was happening and to process our thoughts and emotions together. While I do think this book is best suited for high school readers due to some of its themes, I was grateful to experience it alongside my kids and help guide those conversations. This is not an easy read, but it is an important one. We felt everything while reading it. Anger, grief, fear, and heartbreak were balanced with moments of warmth, humor, and genuine love that made the story feel deeply human. Starr’s voice is powerful, honest, and unforgettable, and Angie Thomas does an incredible job showing the complexity of navigating identity, community, and injustice. I had read this book years ago and always knew I wanted to revisit it with my sons when the time felt right. I’m thankful for the discussions it sparked and the space it created for empathy and understanding in our home. We watched the movie afterward, and while it was well done, the book is far more impactful. The depth, nuance, and emotional weight of the full story make this a must-read. This is a book that stays with you and one I believe everyone should read at least once.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Powerful Must Read
Identity formation including biases can be so powerful. I appreciate how the book challenges the reader to look through multiple layers and intersectionalities of identity especially in the formative adolescent years. Highly recommend this book for every teen and adult.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Amazing Book
I would give the novel “The Hate U Give” 5 stars because this book is a perfect example of how racial discrimination and judgement cause immense pain and horrific trauma to the victim and others who hear about or witness it. This book addresses important social issues and how racism is an ongoing domino effect. This book was not only inspiring and relatable, but it was also informative and intriguing because of the lessons and themes that stood out to me, such as racial judgement and identity. I related to Starr in this novel because, at her age, she is still trying to find herself and her identity while having to try to find where she fits in. Her skin color and her ethnicity are the things that stand out about her, and everyone loves to focus on them. The emotional and realistic storyline left me wanting to read more and find out how the story ends. The realism of the story reflects the damages that the youth experience from violence and inequality. So, I enjoyed how the story flowed, along with the unexpected plot twists, as well as feeling the emotion and energy within the themes. I would definitely recommend this book to the youth and others who enjoy an informational and inspiring book.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Important Read!
Title: The Hate U Give Author: Angie Thomas Genre: Teen & YA Release Date: February 28th,2017 Number of Pages: 447 Format: Audiobook Date Finished: April 5th, 2025 Stars Rated: 5 Writing Mechanics: 5 Writing Artistry: 5 Story: 5 Characters: 5 World Building: 5 Honestly, I don't feel like five stars is enough for this book. The message is powerful. It's an important book that I personally feel like everybody needs to read. There are so many critical thinking moments throughout the entire book. Sometimes we need to take ourselves out of our comfort zone to really see things from somebody else's point of view to truly get the problem. I do plan on reading this book again many times. I can't recommend this book enough. It's an important read.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A book of our times, about hard-hitting issues
When your 14 year old boy, who doesn't read fiction, tells you to read The Hate U Give because "I think you'll like it, Mum", you don't decline. You pick that book up and you devour it. And it wasn't hard to like this book although in a lot of ways, there's not a lot to like. With that contradictory statement, let me explain. The book concerns itself with Starr who witnesses the shooting of her childhood friend, Khalil. That in itself is a heartbreaking tale, only it's not some street killing: he's killed by a cop. A white cop and Starr and Khalil are black. Yes, this opens up a whole other story. Add that it's in a deprived neighbourhood called Garden Heights, plagued by drugs and gangs and you're reading a novel of our times, for sure. Angie Thomas' book covers many things. It is a book about a shooting and injustice but it is also a book about family and community and coming together; it's also a coming-of-age book and all of the awkwardness, excitement and anxiety that comes with being a teen; it's about roots and identity and hopes and aspirations and whether wanting a better life means leaving behind what you know and moving elsewhere, although it may be seen as betrayal; it's a book about desperation, violence and having nowhere to turn and what do you do when you have nothing and no-one to help you but you still have to live somehow? So when I say there's not a lot to like, it's because a mirror has been held up to society and there's a whole lot of ugly reflected back. The book is good. It is a great read and Thomas' storytelling is vivid, right; her characters are rounded and the narrative flows. It's a book you can read quickly and fluidly. But it is hard-hitting in what it depicts and doing it through the eyes of a black teenage girl heightens that vulnerability. It is a social treatise for things to change; for a long hard look to be taken to see the people behind statistics and the families who are struggling, in communities that receive no investment, and to not give up on them or leave them to decline. Read it. You won't be disappointed. I was especially pleased that Starr is depicted as strong, despite being scared. She has integrity and emotional intelligence and Thomas shows her conflicted emotions adroitly. Despite its subject matter, it is a hopeful book. Light is hitting that mirror of ugly like a searchlight and showing there's nowhere to hide and in these dark days in which we live, we need to read books like this to see the human element that we all share beneath our skin.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
great imagery and good diction choices
The hate u give is about a sixteen year old black girl named Staar who lives in Garden Heights. She has to deal with living two different lives, one in her predominantly black neighborhood and another life at her fancy white private school named Williamson Prep.The story takes place in Garden Heights in which it takes a terrible turn. Whenever Staar witnessed her best friend Khalil get shot and killed by a Causacian Police Officer. The officer assumed Khalil reached for a gun and shot him multiple times and he ended up lifeless. He was wrongfully killed due to a racist police officer who believed the suspect had a gun. I admired how Staar wasn't perfect and how she struggled with her everyday tasks. For example, she had to adjust her personality depending on who she was hanging out with to avoid being stereo-typed. She didn’t want her Caucasian friends to assume she was too ghetto and poor to hang out with them. Staar tries to act differently around Haley and Maaya who are Caucasian. She doesn’t want them to judge her for being African American. It is hard for Staar to be her normal self around people of another race as she is comfortable around her own ethnicity. The African American girls in her neighborhood also think Staar is too “bougie” for her to hang out with them because she attends an all white girl school. She feels like she has to code switch just to fit in but Staar says "I can't change where I come from or what I've been through, so why should I be ashamed of what makes me, me? She finally realizes that she doesn't need to act differently around others. Towards the end of the story, she finally enjoys being herself around others including the people from her neighborhood and her school. In conclusion, this story is mainly about how Caucasian Police Officers stereo type against African Americans. staars white friend and teammate haley tells staar”” pretend the ball is a piece of fried chicken “”or this stoie shows how blacks “”gett portrayed as thugs or drug dealers””, thats how khalil was portrayed after his death ,by the cops who didnt face no consequences after wrongly killing Khalil But personally what i liked the most about reading this book is it was entertaining and interesting to read because the imagery was real good and it was like instead of painting a picture in ur mind ur their imagining ur self in garden heights thru the imagery and diction like for example when khalil was getting pulled over then it escalated and he got shot u could feel all the feelings staar and everyone else were going thru
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
AHS school assignment
I believe that The Hate U Give is a solid 4 star book. It’s a great showcase of Racial prejudice and discrimination through trauma and the experiences of a 16 year old girl, Starr. It addresses social issues that were and are currently relevant in today’s society and how it’s compounded over time. It’s relatable to me in how human many of the characters' reactions are and the dialogue between characters. My only gripes are that some of the characters progress in weird ways. Starr is the big example since while she had some other motives to speak up she went from timid to rebellious activist in barely a chapter. It might just be me but I wouldn’t lose all fear just because someone I don’t know that well told me it was okay and being angry. One thing I appreciated about the book is how it shows the contrast between Starr’s social lives between Williamson and at home. At Williamson, a mostly white private school she changes the way she talks, the way she acts, and even how she thinks compared to her home at garden heights. The contrast between the two clashing worlds is somewhat relatable to me. While I don’t have nearly the same dynamic as shown in the book it made me think about how different I am with my family at home and how I probably wouldn’t want some of my friends to talk to others because of differing beliefs and backgrounds. The book does an especially good job at making Starr act like a teenager. She gets nervous, she gets loud, she gets petty and even more than that she’s exhausted. She has to deal with this constant battle between what she perceives as her two halves while dealing with the stress and trauma of Khalil’s death. It’s hard and especially so to someone who’s unable to always truly be themselves whether that be around friends at Williamson or her boyfriend Chris. Her unwillingness to open up about her trauma parallels a lot of what is seen in real life especially in people who feel out of place or people that want to hold up an image. The supporting cast helps a ton with the book too. Her dad being a big part of why Starr feels like she can’t bring people from Williamson to Garden Heights while also being one of the most supportive characters in the book. The large contrast between traits in characters in the book really brings a sense that these characters could be real and that’s why I love this book. (The ending was a little unsatisfying to me but personal preference aside it’s a great book)
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com