Can I just write a four word review? EVERYONE. READ. THIS. NOW. No? You need more? Ok fine. Thomas tells the story through the first-person voice of 16-year old Starr Carter, who is witness to one of her close friends (Khalil, a black teen boy) be killed for no reason by a white police officer. It’s (sadly) not an unusual story if you’ve turned on the news, like, ever… but to see it through the eyes of this young girl makes an unthinkable tragedy […]
A debut that deserves all the praise it’s been given.
I have been trying to figure out what I want to say about this book for literally months now, and I just can’t do it. I give up. The amount of things I want to say are all swirling around in my brain and getting mixed up with each other, and everything is coming out all garbled whenever I try, so I give up and am now officially half-assing this review in a stream of consciousness manner with no regards for structure, and I am no longer […]
I can’t believe the news today. I can’t close my eyes and make it go away.
You may be wondering, hey, what does a 30+ year old song about violence due to religious intolerance in Ireland have to do with this book about the police shootings of innocent young black men in modern day America? And I’ll tell you, I’m not quite sure. But I listened to this song a lot while I was reading this book and this opening line really stuck with me. There’s been a lot of buzz about Angie Thomas’ debut novel, and all of it is deserved. This […]
Hard Topic Done Right
This YA novel has turned into a bestseller and has generated a lot of positive buzz. Angie Thomas, with her first novel, boldly takes on racism and police shootings through the eyes of 16-year-old Starr Carter. Starr is an engaging narrator who straddles two different worlds that will collide, forcing her to make hard choices about who she is and what she ought to be doing. We meet Starr on the night “it” happens. It’s spring break and Starr is at a house party in […]