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May 22, 2020librarianjessica rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
What do you do when you have a bestseller as wildly popular and important as The Hate U Give and you want to write another book? You knock it out of the park. This book is so full of heart and such a brilliant critique of the inequalities that exist in our society. It's different than THUG, but no less important or wonderful. Brianna "Bri" Jackson is a rapper. Her dream is to make it, to get that million dollar contract, to get her family out of the Garden and away from their life of hardships. Bri's dad was Lawless, a rapper famous in the Garden who was shot and killed when she was young; her mom spiralled into drug use after he died. Now, Bri is 16, and she has a shot at real money - but she is going to have to make sure she doesn't lose herself in the process of finding her come up. Yes, this is a story about a rapper trying to make it. But it's so much more than that. Bri encounters so much inequality in her daily life, and a lot of that is like a slap, a wake up call for those of us who don't have to worry about being profiled as drug dealers without ever doing anything wrong. The privilege that I hold was never clearer than it was as I was reading this, and I think that's a sign that this book is doing something so right. From security guards at school to cashiers at drug stores, from police to potential employers to judgement from friends, nothing is safe in this novel. Nothing is safe in Bri's world, and that was so stark and real. But beyond that, this book just has so much heart. Bri is all heart, all love, all fire and passion and drive, and that kept me so invested in her and her story. She's so different from Starr, and the way that her fire drove her to figure out who she was and who she wanted to be was just heart-wrenching for me. I connected with her so deeply. This is a story about family and friendship and budding sexuality and finding faith in something when the world turns against you at every turn. It touched me so much more than I thought it would. It's politically charged, though not quite to the level that THUG is. The sensitivity to these issues, Angie's wonderful writing, and the way everything in Bri's life is so nuanced and multidimensional all make this a novel that the world needs. I certainly did.