Thomas’s debut novel offers an incisive and engrossing perspective of the life of a black teenage girl as Starr’s two worlds converge over questions of police brutality, justice, and activism. The result is a book so thoughtful and so fun to read that you’ll want to Bruno Mars it. The specificity and whimsy of ideas like the anger scale of breakup songs is what keeps The Hate U Give moving so deftly through its heavy subject matter it stays warm and focused and grounded in character even when it’s dealing with big, amorphous ideas like systemic racism. But The Hate U Give is charming and funny and carefully crafted, and Starr’s witty, observant, pop culture–inflected voice is a delight. Whenever a societal problem becomes a national obsession, some adult will write a book about it for teenagers usually the result is a Go Ask Alice–style stew of fearmongering and breathless sensationalism. It was probably inevitable that someone would write a YA novel about police shootings, but it was not inevitable that it would be a good book.

Those two categories intersect only rarely, but The Hate U Give - a debut novel by Angie Thomas - manages the balancing act with aplomb. The Hate U Give is a didactic issues novel for teenagers.

It’s a stark reminder that, instead of seeking enemies at its international airports, America should open its eyes and look within if it’s really serious about keeping all its citizens safe. The Hate U Give is an outstanding debut novel and says more about the contemporary black experience in America than any book I have read for years, whether fiction or non-fiction. The first-person narrative is simply beautiful to read, and I felt I was observing the story unfold in 3D as the characters grew flesh and bones inside my mind.

As the tension mounts, the reader suffers with Starr’s quite ordinary friends and family as they hurtle through extraordinary experiences and circumstances. What makes this novel so compelling is the way Starr negotiates the relatively safe world of school, where she assimilates despite the soft racism of one or two so-called friends, and how she navigates the dangers of her own neighbourhood, where it’s not uncommon to be caught in the crossfire of rival gangs.

The hate book