A review by mudder17
Light It Up by Kekla Magoon

5.0

Wow. That was a powerful book. I picked up this book because of the summary--13 year old girl, unarmed, is shot in the back by a police officer for essentially jogging while black. It's implied that she had her earbuds in as she did her usual routine of jogging and didn't hear the officer when he shot her. When I first started the book, the style of it kind of threw me because the story moved along from different perspectives and I was not yet familiar with the characters. But it didn't take me long to sort them out and it really helped tell the story, especially when discussions of racism, white privilege, and so on where happening between different characters. Many of the discussions covered in this book are reminiscent of real-life conversations I've had with people, both on and off social media. These are important conversations to have and I think this book is an important book to read, especially if you're not a POC, but you're trying to better understand what POC go through every day. On a related note, this is a follow-up of a previous book, How it Went Down, which covers the shooting of Tariq, who is mentioned several times in this book, but I did not know this when I began this story, and while reading the first book might add another layer of depth to this book, this story stands alone very well.

Special thanks to NetGalley, Kekla Magoon, and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.