Angie Thomas is an African-American author known for her most famous book The Hate You Give. Thomas attended the University of Belhaven and recently wrote a second book that takes place in the same neighborhood as her famous book. On the Come Up, which hit the bookshelves in February 2019, is about a 16-year old girl named Briana whose world is turned upside down when her mother loses her job.

Briana wants to become a rapper; it’s her one passion and her goal. She expresses herself through her lyrics and hip hop and Thomas makes us see how important it is to her.

Something I found myself enjoying about this book was the obstacles Briana faced. She even created a song based on how she was feeling during an incident and that song became viral for the wrong reasons.

Briana finds herself in the center of a controversy that she is not in control of. She ends up becoming the one thing she didn’t want to be, in order to get out of this whole mess and make her voice heard.

This book shows what it’s like to be young and black in America. I would recommend it to get a different perspective or to find comfort in the author’s treatment of current events. The book features many elements of Black culture, which I think is very good.

A movie version of the book is in the works, according to https://tinyurl.com/yyyl58am.