Reviews

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas

Only show reviews with written explanations

alexan13's review

5.0

Really loved this book. I think Concrete Rose is quieter, even more of a character deep-dive, than Angie Thomas's other works, and for that reason I think it might be my favorite.

jimbo1066's review

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Angie Thomas can do no wrong. Maverick is one of my favorite characters of all time and seeing every single detailed connection between this book and THUG and On the Come Up made the stories that much deeper and hard hitting. I cried so many times.

mariahistryingtoread's review

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1.0

I’ve found that I have the same grievances with Angie Thomas’ writing every book of hers I read. While The Hate U Give has enough strengths I feel it overcomes these oversights, On The Come Up and now Concrete Rose do not.

My issues with Thomas' writing can be summarized quite succinctly: poor character development, unrealistic teen dialogue, unconvincing romance and long intervals with no plot relevant events. I have noted these four core problems in every book of hers I have read. It is absolutely no different here. Though I’d argue it’s worse since this is part of a story we already know and as such can retroactively affect THUG.

Let’s start at long intervals with no plot relevant details as I feel that is what hurts Concrete Rose the most.

Thomas always allows time to slip by like sand through a sieve. She glosses over the everyday which is harmful in the long run because that is where the meat of character dynamics and development are built. Obviously, books have a timetable to keep so some conversations and/or adventures must be sacrificed for the greater good. But, Thomas sacrifices literally everything that is not directly functional in some way. It often feels like she doesn't want to do any research so she only writes exactly what she knows thereby creating an extremely limited perspective.

For example when Maverick finds out Seven is really his son, he ends up as the sole parent for awhile as Iesha takes this opportunity to dip after spending months shouldering most of the responsibility alone.

The very early days where Maverick absolutely has no idea what to do are the best ones to linger in so we can see how far down he started and chart his learning curve over time. To me the entire appeal of this book is Maverick learning how to be a good father in the midst of all his other struggles like keeping up with school or making it to work on time or trying to win Lisa back. I want to see Seven begin to flourish under Maverick’s care. I'd go so far as to say it's crucial to go into detail because it reveals the underbelly to being a teen parent - sometimes it happens and the people in those situations shouldn’t be demonized for it, but it’s something we should try to discourage when we can.

Thomas skips over all of it.

I never know how old Seven is at any given moment. I have no idea if he’s hitting all the important milestones like sitting up, crawling or his first steps or what Maverick’s reaction is to any of these moments if/when they occur. We don’t even get to experience the magic of Seven calling Maverick dad for the first time. It happens off-page in the past, and suddenly in the present Maverick relays that Seven started doing it months beforehand. Why write this in such a way that we are not able to revel in the poignancy of this moment alongside Maverick? Why can’t we share in this experience too? Isn’t the point of the first person to immerse the reader in the perspective of the protagonist? Also baby stuff just is cute. I want to hear about all the cute baby stuff.

Iesha and Maverick are supposed to go get Seven’s name changed the the week after Thanksgiving - Seven’s name was originally King Jr. because Iesha thought he was the father - and give Maverick full custody yet we don’t get to go see if they ever actually did it. I'm supposed to just assume they did even though it would have been beneficial to see what custody agreements look like in these situations. The kind of paperwork involved or the details of the agreement they made are the kind details that teenagers should get insight into.

She does this all the time. We are constantly removed from what would surely be essential encounters for not only Maverick, but other characters as well to be fleshed out.

This brings me to my next issue: the romance.

Presumably you’ve read THUG before getting to this, and if you have you already know where this is going to go. Lisa and Maverick will eventually reconcile and be stronger than ever. Too bad this book does absolutely nothing to prove why these two should be together. In fact I came out of this thinking Lisa deserved so much better than Maverick. I know that eventually he gets his act straight, but there still needs to be some kind of foundation to build off of to show me why before all the drama occurred Lisa was into this guy despite her better judgment. Teenagers are known to get swept up by hormones so in theory it does make sense. But, there wasn’t enough evidence of chemistry to justify even that much to me in-text.

After Lisa finds out Maverick has been lying to her for the past year she doesn’t speak to him for half the book. She only pops up to have pity sex with him, then get pregnant. After she gets pregnant she’s adamant this doesn’t mean they’ll be in a relationship so she continues to be only sporadically featured.

It all comes back to the bad time-scale. We find out Lisa is pregnant somewhere around November. We know this because Maverick has to tell his grandmother at Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving suddenly it’s FEBRUARY. Three months lost in an instant. We have now missed all the early growing pains for Lisa and Maverick trying to make it work. Worse, we’ve now lost out on all the potential early steps of Maverick working to get back in Lisa's good graces We’re expected to go off a handful of conversations, most of which are the two arguing and what Thomas tells us via Maverick rather than her actually showing us.

After the three month time skip the two are still barely on speaking terms. But, I want to know what exactly went on in that time. Maverick missed out entirely on Seven’s first few months. So I want to see how his time now with Starr will differ since he’s in it from the beginning.

Similarly Maverick’s falling out with King is poorly done. The two shift from friends to enemies on a dime and mostly off-page. King does not appear enough to feel like his friend or enemy either way. I can’t count on one hand the amount of times King appears which is terrible when you consider how pivotal his transformation is to the events of THUG.

I hated how long it took for a particular character to die. It was heavily telegraphed who would be dying so I spent most of the time impatient for it to happen already. When it did I didn’t feel as badly as I could have since I had been waiting so long.

The LGBTQ inclusion is painfully unrealistic. A character close to Maverick reveals they’ve always been Bi and have had a secret partner for some time now. Spoiler: if you want to know who it is and gain further context as to just how ridiculous this is ->

Spoiler

It’s his mother. Her best friend she met after his father went to jail is actually her girlfriend.

Maverick immediately is perfectly fine with this.

You're telling me a Black boy in the hood raised with absolutely no positive LGBTQ imagery and a homophobic community - there is a strong history of homophobia in the Black community - is just a-okay with this character being not just gay, but bisexual? Bisexuality would arguably have been even more stigmatized than merely being gay given the willful ignorance surrounding it as a concept even today. A lot of people recognize gay as a 'thing' even if they don't accept it. Bisexuality is a whole 'nother ball game.

This is coming when Maverick would have spent some of his formative years being inundated with wild misinformation, fearmongering and bigotry through the AIDS epidemic.

I found an article detailing 15 of the most controversial rap lyrics in Hip-Hop history. Trigger warning: The article contains mentions of rape, homophobia, and racism.

Eight are from 1991 to 1998 and seeing how into rap Maverick and his circle are there’s no way they haven’t heard at least some of these songs. They aren’t all directly about homophobia, but the point I’m making is that rap can be absolutely foul and many young men internalize much of the hateful messaging. I refuse to believe that Maverick would accept this character in two seconds flat. He doesn’t question it further or even need to get used to the idea. He goes full on ‘love is love’ in one conversation.

I’m not saying I want Maverick to be some bigot. I am saying that I just cannot for the life of me see him not having some negative or ignorant misconceptions especially because of who this person is to him. He can be accepting for sure eventually, but like give him the space to process beforehand as it’s laughably unconvincing otherwise.

Spoiler

The fact that it’s his mother makes it all the more far-fetched. Kids today, who are living in the most LBGTQ friendly period there ever has been, still struggle when a parent comes out later in life. It’s because regardless of personal beliefs it can still be a total shock to learn something so new and different about a person you thought you had figured out. That restructuring of how you view this person can be difficult. It doesn’t even mean the kid has to react poorly. It just means the kid might be confused or have trouble processing immediately. Maverick’s easy going approval is not impossible, but it sure as heck is implausible.

I felt like Thomas was too worried about making Maverick likable. Like she didn’t want the reader to think badly of him so she needed to make sure he was this trailblazer ahead of the curve even when it strains credulity. But, I don’t think Maverick is a bad person for being homophobic or harboring homophobic beliefs when you look at the other mitigating factors. And if she wrote him learning, growing and apologizing then it would certainly make up for it anyways.

Or if she didn’t want to do that add in sprinkles over time to make it clear that Maverick is okay with the LGBTQ community and explain how that came to be over time. I don’t doubt there were young men who didn’t ascribe to that toxicity. I just don’t think based off of what Thomas has provided here Maverick, specifically, is one of them. I love queer stories as much as the next guy, but only when there's genuine effort behind them.

There are the bare bones of a good story in Concrete Rose, but that’s all there is - bones. I'm not invested because the characters barely interact with one another, Maverick's arc is poorly done because it's so thinly motivated, and Lisa x Maverick makes absolutely no sense under these current parameters. I also think it would have been improved a lot if it was dual pov - either Maverick and King or Maverick and Lisa.

I do not think this book needed to be made. To be fair, I didn’t think so from the get go though I was willing to be open-minded. My mistake. I say stick to The Hate U Give and maybe, On The Come Up if you’re really jonesing for more THUG universe content .