The Atlantic

<i>The Hate U Give</i> Enters the Ranks of Great YA Novels

The bestselling young-adult book by Angie Thomas centers around a 16-year-old girl who sees her childhood friend fatally shot by a police officer.
Source: Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins

“They finally put a sheet over Khalil. He can’t breathe under it. I can’t breathe.”

The last words of Eric Garner, adopted and amplified by the Black Lives Matter movement, echo again in the early pages of Angie Thomas’s young-adult novel The Hate U Give. By the time she’s 16, Starr Carter, the protagonist of the book, has lost two of her childhood friends to gun violence: one by a gang drive-by, and one by a cop.

As the sole witness to her friend Khalil’s fatal shooting by a police officer, Starr is overwhelmed by the pressurekeep her family safe.

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