Oh, Angie Thomas. Your books kill me. I was a fan of The Hate U Give and I was thrilled when I heard about On the Come Up.

It took me a while to see all of the themes that were represented in this book. There's the racism pieces it in, while not as dominant as The Hate U Give. There were pieces about not being heard and about assumptions. However, the strongest theme that really hit home for me was probably one of the smallest ones.

The theme that hit the hardest was knowing that you could make it big, at a cost. You COULD do great things, however, there's only so much you can go for when "[m]y family doesn't have heat." When you wake up in a cold house because you can't afford to turn on the heat, there's only so many risks you can take. You have to make sure you're good and set before risking higher things. Bri didn't have a choice but to risk herself because she thought that by "selling" herself to Supreme, she would help her family become stable again.

This book is about getting a career as a rapper and how it really works. About how rappers sell themselves, create new personalities for public entertainment, just to make a buck. It shows us about independent artists. I have a whole new respect for artists that go without the label after reading this book.

I want to thank Angie Thomas for creating these deep characters for me to fall in love with, setting this story in Garden Heights (the setting for The Hate U Give), and for showing her depth of creativity through the lyrics she wrote. Her plotting was magnificent, characters were dynamic, and the topic was enlightening. I learned so much about rap by reading this book. I declare myself an Angie Thomas fan and I cannot wait to read what else she comes up with!