“And they everything I ever needed”: Angie Thomas’s ‘Concrete Rose’

I look at Ma. “Do you love her?” 

Ma’s eyes get that sparkle I’ve seen before.

I’ve developed a nervous tic ever since I started working in publishing of constantly checking my progress through a book – whether it’s the number of pages left in a hardback or paperback or the ebook %. There are forever too many books, too many deadlines, too few hours.

While reading Concrete Rose I didn’t check once.

This is a story of fatherhood, of grief, hope, and resilience. Like its sequel, The Hate U Give, it draws its title from a Tupac quote, which you can hear at the start of ‘The Rose That Grew from Concrete’ in the eponymous tribute album of his poetry released in 2000, four years after his death aged just 25. It’s the story of 17yo Maverick Carter and how he becomes a father of two while getting swept up in his own father’s set, which sets him on the path that will lead directly to the past we glimpse in The Hate U Give.

There are so many easter eggs, the pacing and characterisation is masterful given we already knew the most formative pillars of his childhood going in, and the voice is not only exquisitely crafted but it’s one of the most unique YA POVs ever penned.

Mr. Wyatt says grief hit you in waves. Sometimes it pull me out to sea and take me under. No wonder it’s hard to breathe as I cry.

I’ve now read every word Angie Thomas has ever published. There are few authors who make me feel safer, warmer, more hopeful. And no one transmutes familial love into ink and paper like she does. Especially parental love. Reading the fierce gravitational surety of Maverick, Faye, Lisa, Jay, Mr Wyatt, Adonis, Dre, Keisha et al is like being simultaneously flayed by a Bolton in the Dreadfort and festooned in kingsfoil by a Dúnedain Ranger. I’m left always with that Emily Dickinson quote: “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all”. To finish an Angie Thomas book is to swallow a whole host of sparrows.

“I’m here, man,” Pops says. “Daddy’s here. It’s okay.” 

Them few words do me in. I say them to Seven all the time, but I ain’t heard them myself in years, and they everything I ever needed.

She’s officially my number 1 auto-buy author (sharing the pedestal with Madeline Miller and Donna Tartt).

I cannot physically or feasibly wait for her MG fantasy series. Going to have to finally source a TARDIS.