Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas

Summary from Goodreads:

International phenomenon Angie Thomas revisits Garden Heights seventeen years before the events of The Hate U Give in this searing and poignant exploration of Black boyhood and manhood.

If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad’s in prison.

Life’s not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav’s got everything under control.

Until, that is, Maverick finds out he’s a father.

Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. But it’s not so easy to sling dope, finish school, and raise a child. So when he’s offered the chance to go straight, he takes it. In a world where he’s expected to amount to nothing, maybe Mav can prove he’s different.

When King Lord blood runs through your veins, though, you can't just walk away. Loyalty, revenge, and responsibility threaten to tear Mav apart, especially after the brutal murder of a loved one. He’ll have to figure out for himself what it really means to be a man.

Review:

Angie Thomas books are wonderful. I will read everything she writes. I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the prequel to The Hate You Give. And then I was surprised again to see how young Star’s parents were. I thought a book about her father would take place a couple decades before this one. But no, her parents were kids when they had their first kids. And reading about them made for a very good story.

I didn’t love Mav like I loved Star. There wasn’t this immediate connection for me. Maybe it’s because our lives are so far removed from each other. I felt sympathy for him, and my heart broke for him a few times, especially over Dre. He has more battles to fight than Star does, and you can see how she comes from him, from both her parents really.

I think maybe part of my disconnect was the fact that the book was as prequel. I knew what was going to happen. Most of the “surprises” for Mav were not surprises for me because I remember The Hate You Give so strongly. That being said, I still read this effortlessly and quickly. The characters felt real. I loved getting to know the background of the Kings, and Mav’s relationship with his father.

The book lightly brushes up on topics I’ve been reading non fiction books about for the past year: racism, prison, drugs, gangs, and a system made to make black men feel like they have no other choices. But, it’s not a book about those things necessarily. It’s more about family and growing up. The Hate You Give tackles the topic of racism a lot more specifically. This book handles more of the deep-rooted, long lasting side effects of it all. And you can’t help but hope for more for these characters who try so hard to achieve for better.

The way Thomas writes grief is so powerful, and I found myself not crying when a death immediately happened, but later, when it came in a wave Mav couldn’t escape. The author understands what it means to feel loss. All in all, I really liked this book. It didn’t have the same impact for me as The Hate You Give, but it was still really good. The topics, the characters, and the story are so real and so compelling, I can’t stop thinking about them. I give it a 9/10.