lcross1 's review for:

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

4.0

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This was good, but for me, far less powerful than The Hate U Give. While THUG made me empathize and feel a bit of what it might be like to be a young black woman caught in circumstances so far outside of the world I know, this one just served to continually remind me of how much of an outsider I was. I think it wanted to make me feel uncomfortable, and not to understand all the cultural references, and make me question what I was doing reading such a book. Almost like shaming me for being a voyeur and being privileged rather than drawing me in and sharing something with me to add to my knowledge of the world... maybe Thomas didn’t write this one for me. (It almost feels like it could have actually been her debut - something she wrote for herself, years ago, when still trying to find her voice.)