cestnicka 's review for:

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas
4.0
emotional hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was a really good read and a great follow up to the hate you give. I'm glad she chose to end the universe of garden heights and the Carter family with this story. 

We meet maverick as an adult in THUG, but concrete rose is all about maverick and his life as a teenager before THUG. Maverick is a 17 year old African American man trying to navigate life, love, friendship and being a parent to two kids at a young age. 

This book talks about the struggles that many young black men go through everyday. It's interesting though to read about these struggles through the POV of maverick. Angie Thomas is a great writer and one thing she does very well is write characters. Her characters feel so real and personal that it's not hard to connect with them and feel empathetic to their situations. This book touches on so many important topics; racism, oppression, poverty, gang involvement and violence. 

I was hoping to get a better understanding of what happening between maverick and king that sent him to jail so that was a bit disappointing, however the story still stands on it's one without that ending so it's still a great read. 


Its important to have stories like this told as they are very relevant to what is happening in the world today. These issues need to be talked about and having stories coming from amazing writers like angie Thomas and Nic stone, they are giving this community a voice and getting people talking about the issues. It also opens up people's worldview and allows us to see a glimpse of what others go through that is different than our own. 

Great read, highly reccomend reading both THUG and concrete rose! I listened to concrete rose as an audiobook and I really enjoyed the narrator I thought he really gave life to mavericks character.