This prequel to The Hate U Give (but you don't need to have read that book first) takes us back to Garden Heights 17 years earlier. Maverick Carter knows his responsibility is to take care of his mom while his father, a former gang legend, is in prison. But the only way for a 17-year-old to truly help his mom is to sell drugs on the side for his gang, the King Lords.
While Maverick knows his life could be better—he’d love people to stop looking at him as a pale imitation of his father—he’s happy with his girlfriend and he has a cousin who looks out for him. And then his life is completely upended when he finds out he’s the father of a three-month-old boy.
How can he be a father when he’s still a child himself? While it completely changes his life, he’s determined to be a better father than the one he had. But he can’t be a father if he’s dealing drugs, so as much as “real work” pains him, when he’s given the chance to walk away from the gang life, he does.
When tragedy strikes and Maverick makes a foolish mistake, he’s faced with a decision: does he do what he needs to in order to survive and take care of his family, or does he continue to walk the right path, even if it may be the harder one?
Concrete Rose was just a fantastic book. I will never know the challenges faced by young Black men, but Thomas takes the reader into that world and gives a glimpse of the struggle between right and wrong, between boyhood and manhood, between being tough and being right.
Thomas never ceases to dazzle me with her power as a storyteller, her ability to make you think and make you feel and make you root for her characters. With this book, she has created another masterpiece that will resonate for long afterward.
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