70. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

read on my iPhone
2017, Balzer & Bray
444 pgs.
YA CRS
Finished 12/30/2017
Goodreads rating:  4.59 - 73,998 ratings
My rating: 5 all the way
Setting:  I'm guessing Jackson, Mississippi area, since that's where the author resides, but perhaps any inner city in the US

First line/s:  "I shouldn't have come to this party."

My comments:  I don't know why I put off reading this for so long, I've had it since it first came out.  So okay, wow.  It was certainly worth the time and effort, and enforced a perspective that as a "white" person I've tried very hard to embrace.  Incredible writing.  Wonderful perspective.  I don't need to write a review for this, it's all been written. This was engrossing, powerful, and very much needed! AND it was terrific to discover what the title represents....

Goodreads synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
          Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
          But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

15. Gods in Alabama - Joshilyn Jackson

Audio read by Catherine Taber
Hachette Audio, 2005
7 unabridged cds
320 pgs.
Rating: 4.5

I love the reader of this audio book. Her southern accent is soft and lovely...a great pleasure to listen to, helping create the setting and the protagonist solidly.

Arlene Fleet left Possett, Alabama the minute she graduated from high school, vowing to never return. Actually, she'd made a deal with God that she would never again lie, fornicate, or return to Possett Alabama, if he would help her out by keeping the body of the guy she killed hidden forever. (!!) Ten years have passed, she's a doctoral candidate in Chicago with an African American boyfriend who's pretty special. She's kept in close touch with her family by phone, but whe hasn't seen them in those ten years. But now, she feels she must break all her promises and return home.

Filled with humor and great storytelling, this book was a gem. Arlene tells the story of the murder and its surrounding in flashbacks throughout the story, beautifully woven in. This was Joshilyn Jackson's first book, she's written three since: Between, Georgia; Backseat Saints, and the Girl Who Stopped Swimming. I've orderd Between, Georgia to see if it's even half as good as this one.