The Hate U Give (Review)

I haven’t seen any negative reviews for The Hate U Give. It was almost immediately adapted into a movie and has already garnered many awards since its release in 2017.

So it’s no surprise that I loved this book too.

The Hate U Give follows Starr Carter, who lives in Garden Heights where gunshots every night is standard, and who attends a fancy prep school full of the kind of rich white kids that would never be seen in her “ghetto” neighborhood. There’s a different Starr for each place, and she’s careful not to let the two intersect too often.

But one night after a party, everything changes.

It’s not the first time Starr has seen a best friend die in front of her when her friend Khalil is shot by the cop who stopped them. 

Depending on the news station, the neighborhood, or the person you ask, the cop is painted as either a villain or a victim, Khalil as either a friend and a young man with his future ahead of him or a drug-dealing gang banger. There is only one witness to what really happened, who knows whether Khalil was armed and what he was doing that night: Starr. 

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

Obviously, the primary conflict in this story is about police brutality in the United States. Despite being YA, this story does not sugarcoat the injustice of what is too often a reality for young black men in America. And considering how much a part of our reality it has become, I would hope it didn’t sweeten anything.

But this story also weaves in a lot of other facets of racism, both wide-spread and small scale. There are discussions in this book on how systematic oppression keeps poor black people poor and rich white people rich. We see how Starr faces microaggressions in both her communities and full-on racist comments from friends and peers. We see how Starr and her boyfriend face criticism about their interracial relationship from both sides, and the trials that come with having a partner that may just live on the other side of town, but seemingly in a whole other (richer, safer, more privileged) world.  We see how the lives of people can be so different even when they’re next door to each other, depending on their situations and the color of their skin. 

We get a lot of themes and messages in this book, big ones beside little ones all tied up together, without anything hitting you over the head with a feeling of “this is the moral of the story” while still being pretty dang obvious. It’s a tricky balance that is perfectly aligned here, making the story accessible to the YA audience it’s meant for but also palpable for older readers too.

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

Beyond the messages this book has to tell, the characters felt very real to me and Garden Heights felt very real. I became quickly and easily invested in both the place and the people. Even minor characters had their own messages to share, their own strings to pull at your heart and make you feel.

The pacing, the narrative voice, and the characters were all so strong and wove together seamlessly to create a great story. The writing here is so conversational, so effortless, the progression of the story so natural, that I didn’t really feel like I was reading this book so much as consuming it, interacting with it, embracing it, experiencing a life I could step into, look around and acknowledge but would never truly know.

Although this story can be difficult to read, it is an incredible book and I would highly recommend it. Fans of the discussion-inducing themes in Dear Martin will likely love The Hate U Give even more. Inevitably, I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars.