Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas | Book Review [no spoilers!]
hi fam how are you, it is I, Smriti and today i have
a book review for you i am so excited about
this because it is a book that was part of my most
anticipated reads of 2021 and i am so glad it came
out in January because ever since i found out that
this was going to happen i was dying to read it
and that is Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas this is
a prequel to a book called The Hate U Give which
was her debut novel which was absolutely stunning
and i clearly have a lot of thoughts about it
so let’s just get into it.
when i read The Hate U Give in 2018 i started
reading it and then put the book down
to just scroll on twitter and that is when i heard of Stephon Clark’s murder by the police.
to say then that the book hit different
would be an understatement.
To give you a brief understanding of what The Hate U Give or THUG is about um it is basically
it follows this girl called Starr who is a 16 yr old who witnessed the murder by the police of her best friend
Khalil, who is a black boy and it just talks then about
the activism and
of had to deal with um and yeah but apart from
all of this um it was clearly a very hard hitting
book but apart from all of this um what i really
absolutely loved about the book was the family
dynamics. Starr just has such a wonderful family
um and everyone is so different and so intriguing
um but one of the characters that absolutely stood
out for me was Mav who is the father character um
who was part of a gang earlier but now is reformed
and is just very involved in his children’s lives
and clearly cares very deeply for them
and you knew that he had a story to kind of tell
which is why when i heard that Angie Thomas
was going to write a book about him um i was
so very excited and that is Concrete Rose
so the book picks up when Mav is 17 years old
and he has just found out that he is going to be
a father he is a high schooler and is also part
of gang but the gang is very much like his family
they protect him and that’s one of the things that
i really liked about this book that it gave you
like a nuanced understanding of why people might
want to join a gang but i digress so let’s just
get into the other aspects of what i want to talk
about um so what i really liked about this book
was that um in this book you essentially see Mav
and his various facets – you see him as a high
schooler, as a 17 year old, as a boyfriend, as a son,
as a father, as a gang member and you see
how all of these various aspects and facets
to his life are just pulling him in different
directions and how he’s trying to just find a
semblance to his life and just kind of make
balance between all of these sort of things
i won’t tell you what happens in the book in terms
of the plot as it continues because there are a
lot of spoilers but let’s just say that this
book was very fast-paced um and it had a lot of
plot twists or things that i didn’t necessarily
see coming and it just had a lot of things that
kept the tempo high however more than anything
this book was very introspective and reflective
and i felt through this book that i really wish
that more boys and men pick up this book because
the number one thing that this book does it’s
subverting the thought process or the norm of
being a man in society today. we see Mav actively
work towards being a better father, a better
caretaker, better boyfriend and work towards
not falling into the traps of being a “manly man”
i love that we got to see various vulnerabilities
of Mav and i know that this is an issue that
black men specifically kind of go through
where they are told by the society to kind of not
show their vulnerable side um and and i really
love that we got to see this aspect in this book
in just so many different sort of ways and
while i cannot speak of a lot of things
um one of the things that as a woman really really
worked for me was how respectful and how wonderful
Mav was in terms of understanding a woman um
and understanding for example how difficult
postnatal depression can be for a woman right
after they’ve given birth. when i say this book has
layers this book has layers there are layers to
people, characters, to situations that they were put
in and i absolutely loved the way Angie Thomas
kind of peeled back these layers just a little bit
to help you understand and to portray the way
that black men and black bodies are treated
in society today. In an interview which she gave
which i will link up and down in the description
she spoke about how it is so important to humanize
black boys and girls especially because of the
way that the media and society kind of treat them
and perceive them to be a certain way. Like we saw
with The Hate U Give, this book is from Mav’s
perspective so the wording and the way that it
is written is very from the way that he would
speak so it has a lot of colloquialisms and slangs
which to a few might be a little difficult to
understand (in the beginning)
but because i just consumed a lot of american content it was easy for me to kind of get into.
The dialogue was witty and sharp and was just so funny. There were so many points in this book
that i found myself chuckling along with what Angie Thomas had written and just the situations
felt so very real. But along with all of this i really enjoyed the way Angie Thomas kind of put in a lot of
hard-hitting stuff. I especially really liked the way that she kind of dealt with
grief
and how we saw various kind of people dealing with it but my main highlight had to be
the way Mav was as a parent. i absolutely loved the way that he interacted with his child
it was just so heartwarming and uplifting um and it was just so wonderful to kind of see on page
and i could totally imagine it. it was just wonderful wonderful writing.
other than Mav, I really liked all the other characters as well
i loved how that they were so true to who they
were in The Hate U Give which was 17 years post
this book but um yeah i just really like them
um i do wish that i got to see more from lisa’s
perspective but of course this was a book written
from mav’s perspective but i have always had
a soft spot for lisa i think she’s um such an
amazing character and i hope that we get to see
more from her in the upcoming books maybe?? i was
definitely happy seeing a lot of easter eggs from
a lot of angie thomas’s other works um and it just
really made me want to read the hate u give again
which i just might end up doing though for those
who have not read the hate you give it is not
necessary for you to read the hate you give first
and then this you can kind of read either way um
there is no i don’t think that there will be um
a way to kind of go about this um i think that
if you should maybe read um the concrete rose
first and then the hate u give that would be
my suggestion because then there would
be some spoilers in the hate you give for
um concrete rose and the way that things kind
of turn out but either way i think works and
both of them are amazing books that you should
definitely pick up i do have to say though and
this is not a spoiler that the way concrete rose
ends i feel like there is scope for that to be
like a 0.5 because concrete rose is technically
zero and then the hate you give is book number one
so i am excited for that and i really hope that
angie thomas you do actually do this to end this
review i would definitely recommend this book
angie thomas has done such an absolutely amazing
job with this it was an absolute delight to read
um i would definitely recommend it and while i
do agree that i am not the ‘right person’ to review
this or um rather i would link down all of the own
voices reviews um of this because i feel like
they would be able to do a better job of just
truly dissecting this book for what it is um
and yeah that’s about it thank you so much for
watching um this review um if there is anything
that you’d want to discuss then please do um drop
down in the comment section i’m happy to discuss
this book or anything else with you if there are
any other books that you’d want me to review let
me know um and i will catch you in my next video
bye
