Concrete Rose
Angie Thomas
#concreterose #maverickcarter #AngieThomas #youngadult #novels #speakup #Blacklivesmatter #impactful
Goodreads summary:
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.
My review:
7/10
Forenote:
This is the first time I have picked up an Angie Thomas novel in a couple of years, so my memory of her previous books is a little vague, but I remember the good parts of The Hate U Give.
Onto the review:
Firstly let's start with the story. The story is a prequel to The Hate U Give (THUG) and focuses on Starr Carter’s dad Maverick. Going into this book I thought the story was going to be as fleshed out as THUG and somewhat right into the action, but it wasn’t. Concrete Rose talked about fatherhood, how it is a struggle to raise a child in an economically disadvantaged environment, and about gangs, revenge, and drug dealing. The middle of this book is where it finally picks up where his cousin Dre is killed, which turns into real tension between two gangs. This death causes Maverick to feel broken and makes him set his mind to getting revenge on the person who killed his cousin.
While this is all going on, it is shifting its focus between two events happening concurrently. After Dre is killed, his ex girlfiend Lisa consoles him and it leads to unprotected sex. Now he has to balance his already existing son, the death of his cousin, and now he impregnated his ex-girlfriend.
Then it only really dabbled on the idea of getting revenge until the end, where it starts to go back to the idea of revenge. For example in one of the chapters, the author mentions how Maverick is getting a gun, but then it goes back to the previous moment. Now that I have dragged on about the story, let’s talk about messages.
I am not a person who likes to be spoon-fed lessons, but figure them out for myself. So after reading this book, one of the lessons I pulled was that I shouldn’t have unprotected sex. This could lead to pregnancy and for some people STDs. Being 16, I could somewhat empathize with Maverick because he is 17, and I couldn’t imagine having a kid at this age. I’m still working on how to take care of myself and what the future holds, just like Maverick, but he has to already act like a grown-up. He lost his most important years because of a mistake.
Another lesson is about finding your truth and how society puts so much pressure on teens, especially for People of Color to fit in a certain box and what the world has planned vs. what you have planned. Lastly, I would like to discuss the dialect of this book.
This book is from a first person perspective, meaning that I was reading the book through Maverick’s eyes. I am a very empathetic person, but with that being said, it was really difficult for me to fully step into the character. I feel bad for the character but I will never be able to fully see the way he is feeling at every point in the story. I say this because I am a white male, so I could never really experience what life is like for any POC.
OVERALL:
I gave this book a 7/10 because I found the storyline kind of slow for the first half, and I am a kid who likes fast paced books. Also I found it hard to read smoothly because the way the character speaks is different from the way I speak in my everyday life, so it was somewhat of a disconnect. I could have been fine not reading this book, because it didn’t really change my life like her other books (THUG).