THE SUNDAY REVIEW | ON THE COME UP – ANGIE THOMAS

Unless you reside under a particularly large and heavy rock, you will have heard of Angie Thomas’ first book, The Hate U Give, which came out in 2017. If you haven’t heard of it, please do yourself a solid, stop reading, go buy it or borrow it or steal it (okay, maybe not that last one) and read it cover to cover and then come back.

Anyway, On the Come Up is Angie Thomas’ follow up to THUG. I adored her first book so much that I couldn’t wait to get my eager little hands on this, so I pre-ordered it last summer and I devoured it as soon as it arrived. And it was another great read, full of important and challenging topics and characters that made me think and consider the way the world (and America in particular) is messed up.

This is the story of Bri, who is sixteen, lives in a rough part of a city that I assume to be Los Angeles, and whose mom is struggling to support the family. Bri lost her father to a gangland shooting when she was just a toddler, but she yearns to step into his large shoes – he was a famous rapper – and onto the stage. Her mom is a recovering drug addict who is fighting tooth and nail to keep herself and her kids healthy (I adored her mom) despite having recently been let go from her job. Her aunt is a drug dealer and gang member, but also one of the most stable people in her life. Her brother is very smart and has a spot waiting for him at university to pursue his dream of becoming a psychologist, but is currently working at a pizza place to help pay the bills. She attends an art school where she is regularly targeted by security and staff as being a trouble-maker. And she has two best friends, both guys, one of whom she isn’t sure if she might possibly have a crush on.

It’s safe to say life is a little bit complicated.

When we meet Bri she is on the cusp of getting the break she’s been waiting for. But, of course, things don’t go smoothly. She gets stopped by the security guards at her school who suspect her of smuggling drugs into the school (she is smuggling contraband, but it’s candy, not drugs). They throw her to the ground and restrain her while searching her bag. The incident sparks a series of consequences – Bri writes a song about it that quickly gains popularity, but isn’t interpreted as she intended, she ends up under pressure to become a poster child for a movement trying to highlight mistreatment of the scholarship kids (kids, like Bri, who are bused in from a rough neighbourhood so the school can qualify for a grant), and she seems to be disappointing everyone in her life.

There are so many layers to this book. It addresses systematic racism that extends beyond the situation Bri finds herself in (this works particularly well if you have read The Hate U Give because On the Come Up references the events that take place in it), how the systems put in place to provide assistance to low income families also trap them, how hard it is to excel at school when you are literally afraid for your life on the way to class, but also how the community she lives in can be supportive of one another because they all know how hard it is. And that’s just a few of the issues addressed – there are so many more.

I loved how Thomas manages to fit so much into one story without ever feeling preachy or forced. Because it’s all part of the fabric of Bri’s life, and as bad as some of the issues she’s struggling with are, they’re just her day-to-day. This, I think, is the strength of Thomas’ writing. She is a master at capturing major issues without seeming to be focusing on them. This was also what made The Hate U Give so briliant.

It’s hard to talk about On the Come Up without comparing it to The Hate U Give. There are a lot of similarities, but I feel like in some ways this book challenged me more as a reader. The Hate U Give was a more polished book, and it definitely got to me on a deeper level. But comparing Starr and Bri, I kind of like that Bri is rougher. Starr, though she felt authentic, also felt like she was intended to be easy for people like me (i.e. privileged white folk) to relate to. She not only went to a school mainly for surburban white kids, but she knew how to fit in in both worlds, and she knew how to “behave.” Bri has had a harder life. She doesn’t tiptoe around anyone, and she has a lot of (justified) anger. She also tends to be impulsive and make decisions that definitely have some negative downstream consequences. It takes more work to be on her side, but I loved that about her. She’s a sixteen-year-old girl dealing with a lot of very real issues, so why shouldn’t she be pissed off? Why shouldn’t she make some bad decisions, just like all of us do at that age? Why do we expect protagonists of books about teenagers to have things figured out? Do we not remember what it was like to be sixteen? Because I do, and there were a lot of questionable decisions made. There was definitely some anger. And I’m a privileged white kid from Canada who grew up in a completely safe environment and went to a private school. So if I got to be angry and make bad decisions, Bri definitely gets that same leeway.

As for the story itself, most of it was great. I didn’t find that it has as much emotional impact as THUG, but I didn’t expect it to, because that was a rare gem. I saw a few of the twists coming way off, but I still enjoyed the ride. I think one thing that made it a little harder for me to get into this book was the rapping element to it. I love hip hop, but I don’t love reading about it when there’s nothing to listen to. It’s hard to really get the impact of the rhymes in text. I kept wishing the book came with a soundtrack that I could listen to as I was reading, because that would have really helped. I don’t know if everyone will have this same problem, maybe it’s just me. But it definitely took me out of the story a bit.

This book is great, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who loves YA literature, anyone who loved The Hate U Give, anyone interested in how some of the major issues playing out in America right now affect teenagers living in the middle of the mess, and basically anyone else. I think it’s yet another important, timely novel, and has firmly established Angie Thomas as being an author I will always read.

Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least make it out of her neighborhood one day. As the daughter of an underground rap legend who died before he hit big, Bri’s got big shoes to fill. But now that her mom has unexpectedly lost her job, food banks and shutoff notices are as much a part of Bri’s life as beats and rhymes. With bills piling up and homelessness staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it—she has to make it.

On the Come Up is Angie Thomas’s homage to hip-hop, the art that sparked her passion for storytelling and continues to inspire her to this day. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; of the struggle to become who you are and not who everyone expects you to be; and of the desperate realities of poor and working-class black families. – Goodreads

Book Title: On the Come Up
Author: Angie Thomas
Series: No
Edition: Hardback
Published By: Balzer + Bray
Released: February 5, 2019
Genre: Fiction, Young Adult, Race, Coming of Age
Pages: 464
Date Read: February 13-17, 2019
Rating: 8/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.42/5 (10,056 ratings)