“Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.” Eleanor Roosevelt

I always like to set the tone for the review with a quote. I could have picked Don’t Stand So Close To Me by The Police for this one: “Young teacher the subject of school girl fantasy, she wants him so badly, knows what she wants to be…” But I feel this book goes beyond the teacher-pupil story. At its heart is justice.

Nick Dean’s world caves in around him as a student levels an accusation against him that he touched her inappropriately. It isn’t true but the general principle of being innocent until proven guilty is turned on its head in these circumstances. He is immediately suspended from teaching, and worse, not permitted to be unsupervised with his children, which causes enormous strain on his family life as his wife juggles her job and the childcare. Nick simply cannot understand why he has been accused by this girl, Angela.

Angela isn’t one of the popular girls in school. Prone to being a loner, she’s unhappy at home, regularly having stand up rows with her mum. Her parents are divorced, a common enough reason for a child to be upset, angry and bewildered. But can this really be the root of why Angela creates such a fantasy about her teacher, the only teacher who actually seemed to encourage her in her classes?

I always struggle with stories where there is an undercurrent of false accusation or injustice. It must be my inner lawyer railing against it. This novel deftly treads the line, scattering elements of doubt about what we think we know to be the truth but leaves you wondering whether justice will indeed be served, and to whom.

“There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life.” Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird

If you don’t go in to book stores to buy your books, you don’t get to chat to the people who work there, invariably book lovers themselves. While treating my niece and nephew to a couple of new books in the children’s section in Waterstones, I confessed to the girls on the till that I had a bit of a thing for teenage fiction myself. They immediately pointed me in to the direction of The Hate U Give and were so effusive about it, that I was not able to leave the shop without bringing it with me. Do believe the hype. This is such a powerful read.

From the start this book is punchy, confronting the reader with the unwarranted shooting of a child. The misfortune of crossing the path of a prejudiced and paranoid police officer while being black and male. Starr is in the passenger seat when her friend Khalil, gets pulled over by the officer for no apparent reason. Moments later, she is cradling him as he slips away, multiple bullets in his back from the gun of white officer.

The Hate U Give makes plain how it feels to be fearful of being just who you are in case that puts you in a stereotyped box, paints you with only the negative traits associated with that stereotype and denies you justice because guilt becomes presumed unless innocence can be proven, though if the bullet is already out of the gun you have already been tried, judged and sentenced, with no chance of appeal.

Starr takes us through her grief for her friend, her guilt that she couldn’t have saved him, not just in that car but in the months leading up to the moment, how treacherous she feels to be with a boyfriend whose skin is the same colour as the man who murdered Khalil, and her discovery of the power of a voice that is brave enough to make itself heard.