The critical record makes a strong case: The Hate U Give debuted at number one on the New York Times young adult best-seller list and stayed there for 50 weeks, earned starred reviews including the Christian Science Monitor's declaration that it is "extraordinary and fearless," and has since been inducted into HarperCollins's American Classics series. The Globe and Mail urged readers to set aside the YA label entirely, calling it "the one book everyone reads this year." Thomas's achievement is to embed urgent social argument about race, activism, and code switching inside a story grounded in Starr's specific grief, family, and daily life — never letting the polemic overwhelm the character. Readers who want a neatly resolved ending will not find one, but those who engage with fiction that places the responsibility for change on the reader will find it a genuinely powerful experience.

Best for readers ages 14 and up. The Hate U Give is written for high school-age audiences and deals directly with the witnessed fatal shooting of a character, police violence, systemic racial injustice, and the pressures of code switching. Its language is unflinching — the American Library Association lists it among the most challenged books of 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2021, with objections centered on language and its direct engagement with race and activism. Younger teens can engage with it meaningfully, but parents and educators should be prepared for the weight of its subject matter.

The Hate U Give

by Angie Thomas

$9.00 on Amazon Read our full review

At a glance

Pages444

First published2017

SettingContemporary American South, two worlds

NarratorBahni Turpin

AudienceYA (12-18)

About the Author

Angie Thomas

1 book reviewed

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The Hate U Give

Name: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Author: Angie Thomas

by Angie Thomas

LuvemBooks Verdict

Best for: High school readers and adults drawn by the film or cultural conversation who want a character-driven story that tackles race, code switching, and systemic injustice through one teenager's specific grief and choices rather than through abstraction.

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The Hate U Give follows sixteen-year-old Starr Carter as she witnesses the fatal police shooting of her childhood friend Khalil and is forced to find her voice across two sharply divided worlds — her home neighborhood and the elite private school she attends. Angie Thomas's debut is a landmark of contemporary YA fiction, spending 50 weeks at number one on the New York Times young adult best-seller list and earning widespread critical acclaim for embedding urgent argument about race, code switching, and the Black Lives Matter movement inside a deeply character-driven coming-of-age story. The key caveat: Thomas deliberately refuses a tidy resolution to systemic injustice, so readers seeking narrative closure will not find it — the burden of action is left with the reader.

Is it worth reading?: The critical record makes a strong case: The Hate U Give debuted at number one on the New York Times young adult best-seller list and stayed there for 50 weeks, earned starred reviews including the Christian Science Monitor's declaration that it is "extraordinary and fearless," and has since been inducted into HarperCollins's American Classics series. The Globe and Mail urged readers to set aside the YA label entirely, calling it "the one book everyone reads this year." Thomas's achievement is to embed urgent social argument about race, activism, and code switching inside a story grounded in Starr's specific grief, family, and daily life — never letting the polemic overwhelm the character. Readers who want a neatly resolved ending will not find one, but those who engage with fiction that places the responsibility for change on the reader will find it a genuinely powerful experience.
Similar books: Readers drawn to The Hate U Give's blend of social urgency and deeply personal coming-of-age narration will find several strong companions. Angie Thomas's own follow-up novels On the Come Up and Concrete Rose revisit the same world and themes with the same character-driven approach. For YA fiction that tackles race and activism in a dual-narrator format, All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely is a natural next read, as is Dear Martin by Nic Stone. Readers interested in YA novels that give a marginalized voice narrative power over a traumatic event may also connect with Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, while The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton offers an earlier classic study of class, loyalty, and youth caught between worlds. Adam Silvera's More Happy Than Not shares the emotional intensity and the same refusal to offer easy comfort.
Who should read this?: The novel is positioned for high school-age readers and older, but its reach extends well beyond that — The Globe and Mail urged readers to set aside the YA label entirely, and adults drawn in by the 2018 film or the cultural conversation around race and policing will find it fully accessible. It is particularly well suited to readers who engage with YA fiction that takes on race, identity, and civic life, and who appreciate social argument delivered through character rather than polemic. Because the novel deliberately refuses to resolve systemic injustice with a tidy ending, it is best embraced by readers willing to sit with that discomfort and accept the burden of action the story places on them.
What age is it for?: Best for readers ages 14 and up. The Hate U Give is written for high school-age audiences and deals directly with the witnessed fatal shooting of a character, police violence, systemic racial injustice, and the pressures of code switching. Its language is unflinching — the American Library Association lists it among the most challenged books of 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2021, with objections centered on language and its direct engagement with race and activism. Younger teens can engage with it meaningfully, but parents and educators should be prepared for the weight of its subject matter.
About Angie Thomas: Born and raised in Mississippi before making Atlanta her home, Angie Thomas burst onto the literary scene with her groundbreaking debut The Hate U Give in 2017.
Tell me about the adaptation: The Hate U Give was adapted into a film by 20th Century Fox, released in October 2018 to positive reviews. The novel was also adapted into an audiobook that earned awards and praise for narrator Bahni Turpin — a format that LuvemBooks' review notes demonstrates the story's resonance across media. The novel's translation into 29 languages and its inclusion in HarperCollins's American Classics series further reflect a cultural reach that extends well beyond its original publication.
What are the main themes?: The Hate U Give is built around several interlocking themes: police violence against Black Americans, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the everyday reality of code switching — the way Starr must shift her language and behavior between her home neighborhood and her predominantly white private school. Thomas also explores systemic injustice, the pressure to speak up in the face of institutional failure (the grand jury's decision not to indict Khalil's killer), and the specific experience of navigating two sharply divided social worlds. Crucially, Thomas embeds all of this inside a story grounded in family, friendship, and Starr's specific grief — the social argument is delivered through character, not polemic.

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Is it worth reading?

Who should read this?

What age is it for?

About Angie Thomas

Tell me about the adaptation

What are the main themes?

Summarize this book

The Hate U Give is narrated by Starr Carter, a sixteen-year-old African-American girl who lives in a poor neighborhood but attends an elite, predominantly white private school. The novel's central event is immediate and devastating: Starr witnesses a white police officer shoot and kill Khalil, her childhood friend. As social tensions build toward a riot after a grand jury declines to indict the officer, Starr is forced to speak up in increasingly public ways, navigating the pressures of her two worlds while grappling with grief, identity, and the demands of code switching. Angie Thomas has said she set out to approach the subject "not just in anger, but with love even," and that dual intention shapes every layer of the narrative.

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Age & Reading Level

Recommended age

Ages 12–18

Reading level

Young adult

Browse all 12–18 books

Content to know about

on-page depiction of fatal police shooting

racial slurs and racially charged language

civil unrest and rioting

drug dealing references

Best for: Ages 14 and up — the novel deals directly with a witnessed fatal police shooting, racial injustice, and unflinching language that reflects the realities of its subject matter; best suited to high school-age readers and older.

Skip if you want a story that resolves systemic injustice with a hopeful or tidy conclusion.

Editorial Review

Angie Thomas's debut young adult novel, The Hate U Give, follows sixteen-year-old Starr Carter as she navigates two worlds — the poor neighborhood she calls home and the elite private school she attends — until a white police officer shoots and kills her childhood friend Khalil before her eyes, thrusting her into a national reckoning. Originally published in 2017 by HarperCollins imprint Balzer + Bray, the novel debuted at number one on the New York Times young adult best-seller list and stayed there for 50 weeks, drawing widespread critical praise for Thomas's writing and the timeliness of its subject matter.…

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Books like The Hate U Give

Curated picks for readers who enjoyed The Hate U Give, with our reasoning for each match.

If you liked The Hate U Give

In our catalogue

Speak

Laurie Halse Anderson

A teenager silenced by trauma slowly reclaims her voice against a system that ignores her — same coming-of-age core as Starr's journey, different injustice.

Speak is one of the most direct answers to the question 'what to read after The Hate U Give.' Like Starr Carter, Melinda Sordino opens the book unable to speak about a devastating event that happened to her, and the whole novel tracks her painful, inch-by-inch journey toward finding language for what she experienced. Both books use a single traumatic incident as the engine for a much larger story about power — who gets believed, who gets silenced, and what it takes to stand up anyway. Laurie Halse Anderson's writing is sharp and sometimes darkly funny, which keeps the heavy subject matter from feeling crushing. If you finished The Hate U Give wanting more YA fiction that centers a young woman's voice rising out of injustice, Speak delivers that with the same emotional precision.

In our catalogue

The Outsiders

S. E. Hinton

Two rival worlds, class divides, and a teenager caught between loyalty and survival — the 1967 blueprint for exactly the coming-of-age conflict Starr navigates.

Long before Starr Carter was code-switching between Garden Heights and Williamson Prep, Ponyboy Curtis was caught between the Greasers and the Socs in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Outsiders and The Hate U Give share a structural DNA: a teenager from the wrong side of town witnesses violence, loses a friend, and is forced to decide who they really are when their two worlds collide. S. E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders at sixteen, and that youthful authenticity gives the book the same raw, unpolished honesty that makes Thomas's debut so powerful. Readers looking for books like The Hate U Give who want an older classic with the same neighborhood loyalty, the same grief, and the same urgent question — 'does anyone outside my world see me as a full human being?' — will find The Outsiders holds up completely.

In our catalogue

Girl in Pieces

Kathleen Glasgow

Gritty, unflinching YA about a teenage girl rebuilding herself after trauma — for readers drawn to Starr's emotional rawness but wanting a different social context.

Girl in Pieces follows Charlie Davis, a teenage girl who has survived profound loss and self-harm and is slowly, painfully piecing herself back together. The social justice framework of The Hate U Give is largely absent here, but the emotional engine is identical: a young woman who has been broken by forces bigger than herself finding the language and the will to survive. Kathleen Glasgow writes with the same unsparing honesty that Angie Thomas brings to police violence — nothing is softened, nothing is resolved too neatly. This is the pick for readers who connected most deeply with Starr's inner life and her grief, and who want that same intensity of feeling in a new story. It's a strong answer for the reader who loved the emotional weight of The Hate U Give but wants a completely different setting and social landscape.

Not your thing?

In our catalogue

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Stephen Chbosky

If The Hate U Give's activist urgency felt too heavy, this quieter coming-of-age epistolary novel delivers the same teenage outsider emotional depth without the political weight.

Some readers come to The Hate U Give for the coming-of-age story and find the sustained focus on racism, protest, and civil unrest emotionally overwhelming rather than energizing. If that was your experience, The Perks of Being a Wallflower offers a gentler on-ramp to the same core YA rewards: a teenager navigating two social worlds, processing trauma, and figuring out who they are. Charlie's story is told entirely through letters, which creates an intimate, almost confessional tone that makes his inner life feel just as vivid as Starr's. The themes — outsider identity, grief, the gap between who you are at home and who you are at school — are directly parallel, but the pacing is slower and more introspective, and the political dimension is largely absent. It's a different kind of important YA novel, one that leaves more room to breathe.