Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl's struggle for justice.

Review: Wow! This was such a powerful, intense read. I have to admit that I couldn't read too much of this book at a time because it was so intense and made me question things going on around me. I loved this book though. There is so much hype surrounding it, I wasn't sure if I would or not but I really did find it an eye-opening page turner. One of the great things about this writer is that, similarly to John Green, she is honest with her audience. This book features racism, police brutality and gang culture and at no point does she sugar-coat this or pretend that it isn't happening. 

Starr is a great main character to tell this story though, and part of the narrative of this book is how Starr grows and changes as she realises the impact that she can have depending on what she does and doesn't say to the police and to the media. She has so much stuff thrown at her in this novel and yet she deals with it with integrity and really grows as a person because of it. One of the things I found difficult to read was the way she was treated at school because she was one of the only black students. Most of my teaching experience has been at a school with a complete mix of pupils and so there was no one person who wasn't represented elsewhere, but it was a real eye opener for me. 

Another thing that I think this writer does really well is the feeling within the community after the killing of Starr's friend and the protests that follow. She is able to show the fear through the other characters in the novel and their thoughts and actions. This is something I have never been through and yet I felt sympathy and empathy for the families that we follow in this novel. Although there is violence and drugs in this book, I definitely think that she has written this for the young adult novel and nothing is ever graphic or scary for the sake of being graphic or scary. I would definitely recommend this read, ignore the hype and make your own opinion by picking this novel up now. I can't wait to hear more from this brilliant writer!

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Review: That Girl From Nowhere by Dorothy Koomson

‘Where are you coming from with that accent of yours?’ he asks.
‘Nowhere,’ I reply. ‘I’m from nowhere.’
‘Everyone’s from somewhere,’ he says. 
‘Not me,’ I reply silently. 

Clemency Smittson was adopted as a baby and the only connection she has to her birth mother is a cardboard box hand-decorated with butterflies. Now an adult, Clem decides to make a drastic life change and move to Brighton, where she was born. Clem has no idea that while there she'll meet someone who knows all about her butterfly box and what happened to her birth parents. 

As the tangled truths about her adoption and childhood start to unravel, a series of shocking events cause Clem to reassess whether the price of having contact with her birth family could be too high to pay...



Review: this was an interesting one for me, I actually started this book quite a while ago but I couldn't get into it so I downloaded the audio book and started it again. I'm glad I stuck with it because the issues that this books deals with are nothing like I have faced in my own life and are so wide-ranging and vast that I feel I learnt things from this novel. It was quite tough-going at points but I am glad that I stuck with it! This books covers the topics of divorce, infidelity, assisted suicide, adoption, racism, sexism and also what to do when you've found the perfect coffee shop but can't go there anymore-that last one I could empathise with!

The manin character of this novel was adopted as a baby and knows nothing of her birth mother. A chance encounter changes that for her and we get to see how it all unravels. I really struggled to relate to Clemency and so I found her very hard to like or bond with. I think this did affect my enjoyment of the books, but the book is so much more than just a bout her.the others characters in the novel we're similarly dispositioned and so I didn't develop an affinity with any of them in particular. The owner of the aforementioned coffee shop was the person I liked the most and I struggled to get along with the others to be honest. 

As I said though this book is about so much more than them. I found it really interesting to hear how Clem was affected by her adoption and by everything else that followed. Her relationship with her mother and her birth mother are really interesting and as that unravelled, that was the real story for me. She is also a small business owner and so the struggles with that and also with living and setting up in a new city were much easier for me to get along with. I thought that Dorothy Koomson dealt with these issues incredibly well and I would be really interested in reading more books by this author in the future!

To get this book now and see for yourself, just click here.