Angie Thomas’s YA book The Hate U Give is one of those rare books that is perfect for all audiences — for black folks who want an honest reflection of daily reality for many of them, for white folks who want to be better allies in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, for white folks who don’t understand why #AllLivesMatter is bad. 

Starr is a wonderful main character, full of verve and love. She witnesses the brutal, sudden murder of her friend at the hands of a cop, and spends the rest of the book grappling with the fallout of that event. Starr is a black teenager living in the city and commuting to a nearly all-white prep school in the suburbs, and much of the novel involves Starr navigating those two different worlds and figuring out her relationships in both of them. She’s also a teenager figuring out romantic relationships, and a sister joking around with her brothers, and a dutiful daughter in a family that expects a lot from her. There’s a lot of easy humor and genuine affection in this novel.

Starr’s family and friends are well-drawn characters as well, written with a complexity supporting characters aren’t always given. But it’s important that they be complex, because this book is so grounded in the real world that if there were any false note, you’d notice it immediately. Instead, I cried and feared for Starr and her loved ones as they helped each other through some of the hardest things people have to experience.

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