Concrete Rose

SYNOPSIS:

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. But then, he finds out he's a father and has to decide how he'll support his family.

REVIEW

(2 STARS)

First of all, I'd like to thank Fay for being my buddy read and being patient with my slow reading pace over this chaotic month.

Unfortunately, this was not as good as we thought it would be.

As many of you know, this book is a prequel to 'The Hate U Give' (one of my favourite books of all time). My expectations were high – not only because I love Angie Thomas' writing but also because I was expecting the plot to be as interesting and poignant as her debut novel.

It wasn't. This book was the epitome of an undeveloped plot and nonexistent character growth.

There were many featured characters whose stories could've been better explored – like King and Dre – and many subjects that could've been more developed – such as gang life, drug dealing, education, postpartum depression and single parenting.

Instead, we follow Starr's father (a man I've always admired) being an absolute unconscious young man who practices unprotected sex and has the audacity to be baffled when his partners get pregnant. That's basically the sum up of the most pf the plot. This book should've been called 'Concrete Brains' or simply 'Men' because at some point it just became too bad to be true.

There's nothing I enjoyed about this story apart from its quick pace – the only reason why I didn't DNF this.

It hurt me to see a book with such potential fail so miserably.

If only Thomas had focused more on the societal issues instead of on Maverick and his dumb a**, I think I would've enjoyed this a hundred times more.