I gave this book 5 stars because it is one of my favorite books I read this year, and I definitely see myself reading it over and over again. It's not a perfect book, of course, but I truly do think it is deserving of this rating.

One of my favorite things about this book that I don't think it gets enough love for is the relationship between Starr and her family. I think it is genuinely one of my favorite depictions of a family in a book. This family is so realistic and heartwarming and funny and so so full of love. It is a crazy thing to read a book where you can feel that love radiating off the page so strongly even though the characters are not even real. You could see that too with the Garden Heights community. I loved the interactions Starr and her family had with members of the community. When you read this book, you truly feel like the characters have known each other for ages and that they care about one another even though they aren't related by blood. The characters in this story feel so real and that makes them that much more loveable to me.

Obviously, this book gets a lot of love for how reflective and informative it is on the struggles that Black people face in America, especially when it comes to things like police brutality, micro-aggressions, systemic racism, etc. That's truly one of the things that makes this book so important and impactful. Without saying too much, what I truly appreciated about how this story handled the issue of police brutality against the Black community is that it didn't give you this perfect happy ending. It is a good happy ending, but it is very bittersweet. I have seen countless TV shows, movies, etc. cover police brutality and they paint this fairytale where everything goes perfectly and justice is served exactly as we would hope it would be. And it would be super sick to live in that world, but we don't. We live in a world where things are much more complicated, where things don't always go the way you would hope, and I'm glad Thomas showed that reality. I'm glad she didn't sugarcoat a single thing.

I'll admit this though: Though I appreciate how honest it is about these issues, I think sometimes it does read like a PSA-type video, like one of those videos teachers would put on to teach you about bullying. The way that those informative bits were inserted into the book felt unnatural at times, and it took me out of the story a little bit. But I will say that I am much older than the target audience for this book, and I think that could be part of it. If this book is meant for a primarily teenage audience that will most likely discuss this book in class, maybe it needs to be more obvious and clear about the points it is making. I think that can be a good thing too.

I'll also say that this book, like most books about teenagers written by adults, did not completely grasp how teenagers communicate. I think Thomas did a better job than most because most of the dialogue sounds very natural, but every once in a while I came across a line that had me cringing a little bit. My qualification for saying this is that I was a teenager during the time that this book is set in (lol), so sometimes the dialogue read like an adult trying to sound like a teenager. 

A final little tidbit of criticism: The pacing for this book was a little all over the place. I usually don't mind books where not much happens because they're set in the real world and the real world is not all that exciting, of course. But at times it felt like there was a lot of unnecessary filler that dragged the book down a bit. It, unfortunately, got a little boring at times because of it.

Thomas is a great author, and considering this is the first time she ever published a book, seeing what she achieved with The Hate U Give is incredible to see. I'm incredibly happy for her, and I hope she is having a prosperous and fulfilling career.