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.

18. American Street by Ibi Zoboi

read on my iPhone
20117, Balzer & Bray
336 pgs.
YA CRF
Finished 3/25/17
Goodreads rating: 4.14 (601 ratings)
My rating: 2 and 4
Setting: Contemporary inner city Detroit

First line/s: "If only I could break the glass between me and Manman with my thoughts alone."

My comments: I have no clue how or what to rate this book.  It took me to a place that I don't know.  At all.  What happens when a smart immigrant girl from Haiti is thrust directly into the midst of the toughest streets of contemporary Detroit without the mother who has always nurtured and guided her and with only her voodoo spirit guides and street-savvy cousins?  Will that girl do anything - anything - to get her imprisoned mother back?  I don't know what it's like to be a black American or a black immigrant, I don't know what it's like to live in the inner-city with its full share of violence and drugs.  I don't know anything about Haiti, or voodoo.  And a much as I try to empathize, all I know is what I hear on the news.  This book takes you much closer than the news.  Much.  Closer.  And it's heartbreaking.

Goodreads synopsis:  The rock in the water does not know the pain of the rock in the sun.
          On the corner of American Street and Joy Road, Fabiola Toussaint thought she would finally find une belle vie—a good life.
          But after they leave Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola’s mother is detained by U.S. immigration, leaving Fabiola to navigate her loud American cousins, Chantal, Donna, and Princess; the grittiness of Detroit’s west side; a new school; and a surprising romance, all on her own.
          Just as she finds her footing in this strange new world, a dangerous proposition presents itself, and Fabiola soon realizes that freedom comes at a cost. Trapped at the crossroads of an impossible choice, will she pay the price for the American dream?

73. Homeboyz - Alan Lawrence Sitomer

Jump at the Sun/Hyperion, 2007
$16.99
283 pages
for: YA/High School
Rating: 4.5

Although this book is the third in a series about siblings living in the inner city of LA, I have not read the first two and did not need to. It stands alone. And it's good. Impossible to put down. I inhaled it in two evenings.

Teddy Anderson's 14 year-old sister has been killed - an innocent bystander - in a gang killing. 17 year-old Teddy, who is more-than bright and a computer hacker extraordinaire, is driven by revenge. He's not part of a gang, but he knows them, understands the mentality, because he's always lived in the 'hood. His brilliant plan has one tiny, microscopic, unforeseen hitch, and he is caught and incarcerated. It's the punishment that "makes the man"....and saves a 12-year old wanna-be gangsta as well.

You see a little bit into the reason that gangs still blossom and grow. It's difficult to understand, but you can see why it happens and what its enticements are. Powerful book.

Sad stuff. Good stuff. Fascinating stuff. Viva la biblioteque! A well written story with a happy ending, redemption... and a little bit of mystery still left. A fourth novel, perhaps?