On The Come Up by Angie Thomas Book Review
“This is a temporary setback for a major comeback. We ain’t letting it stop the come up.”
(pg 84)
About
Author: Angie Thomas
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Other Books by Angie Thomas: The Hate You Give
Click to read other book reviews
Synopsis
Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least make it out of her neighborhood one day. As the daughter of an underground rap legend who died before he hit big, Bri’s got big shoes to fill. But now that her mom has unexpectedly lost her job, food banks and shutoff notices are as much a part of Bri’s life as beats and rhymes. With bills piling up and homelessness staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it—she has to make it.
On the Come Up is Angie Thomas’s homage to hip-hop, the art that sparked her passion for storytelling and continues to inspire her to this day. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; of the struggle to become who you are and not who everyone expects you to be; and of the desperate realities of poor and working-class black families.
Review
Spoilers Contained Below
To those on the come up,
You know Angie Thomas is one of the coolest authors around. From her writing, I can tell that she would be such a real, honest, fun friend to have and she’ll tell you straight up. I love Angie Thomas and the way she beautifully crafts her words to make a story that relates to her and so many other people. She also creates stories that make you look at things from a different life. As someone who grew up in a small town, I haven’t been aware of some of the things that other people grow up with. I mean, I have heard about the hardships that people go through, but you really don’t know about the hardships. And it’s harder to imagine that real life people do experience some of the things that Angie talks about in her books and whenever I read her books, I take a step back and think about how close this fictional story touches on reality and how gosh darn SUCKY, DIFFICULT, and UNFAIR things are for people.
This is the book that brings awareness to those like me who have been sheltered from the things the world tries to cover up and hide. This is the book that needs to be talked about alongside The Hate You Give. And honestly I’m probably going on a tangent because recently I watched The Hate You Give and I have never cried with anger at a movie as much as I did watching this. And I sat there in my tears wondering why hasn’t anyone been talking about this movie? Then I understood. The Hate You Give didn’t get a lot of publicity or stay in the theaters for a long time because some big people in society knew that this movie was going to be controversial and impactful and initiate change. Change is what they don’t want. So what does society do? They hid the movie from the public. They didn’t make it a big deal because they don’t want people getting ideas. They don’t want people to have the conversation of how African Americans in this world are treated as inferior all the time.
Well, I say it’s a shame on us.
If you haven’t watched The Hate You Give, you should watch it, you should read it, you should talk about it.
But this is a book review of On The Come Up, so let’s talk about that 😆
I really liked Bri. She’s someone who’s headstrong, stubborn, passionate, and fiery. I love her spunk in the way she doesn’t take any rudeness from anyone and that she could stand up for herself. It differed a lot from Starr because Starr was more reserved and quiet and had a silent kind of passion in her, but Bri’s like the supernova that just bursts all the time whenever she felt anything. Bri’s also a rapper. She’s coined the name Lil’ law because she’s the daughter of the famous King of Rap in Garden Heights. I also liked the fact that this book took place in Garden Heights again and that it touched on events from The Hate You Give and how the town was dealing with it afterwards.
Bri gets her big moment at the Ring, which is like a rap battle in a boxing ring where she spits fire to Milez, Supreme’s son. Supreme used to be the manager for her dad, so it was kind of a low blow that he would pin his own son against her in his first ever battle. Milez was an interesting character to me because he didn’t really want to be a rapper. He was only a rapper because his dad made him be. I loved the moment when Supreme was trying to get Bri to pick him as his manager and Milez is in the car and acted all cordial and nice to Bri. I really liked Miles, or Milez with a s. He just seemed very real unlike his dad.
Whenever Bri rapped, we got insight as to how she came up with it. I really liked getting to see that creative process because I’m no rapper myself, so I thought rappers just say whatever comes to mind or whatever rhymes, and in a way it’s kind of true, but it’s also a constant process of taking things from their experiences and changing them together with rhymes and words to make it mean something. It’s beyond a cool process—–something I know I can’t do—–so I have so much more respect for those who rap.
After Bri’s big debut at the Ring, her Aunt Pooh and her go to a recording studio so that Bri can get her come up. The phrase on the come up was all about how Bri—-and everyone in Garden heights—– have constantly been knocked down in the process of trying to survive or make their dreams come true. But this book was about overcoming those hardships in order to make a living and to achieve her dreams—-it was her come up. It was her chance to stand up and chase down what she wanted—-to have her shot and to take it. I really liked that sentiment because it’s kind of like saying a work in progress when you’re still trying to do something day by day to reach a goal, but being on the come up is like the same thing where you work towards what you want and you try to do it.
Bri was doing it. She recorded this whole song called, of course, On The Come Up, that voiced all this anger and hurt she felt from being an African American girl. Recently at school, two white security guards pinned her to the ground because they thought she was suspicious when really she was selling candy. The whole scene was recorded and shared online, making parents think that Bri was another ‘hoodlum’ who probably sold drugs. Shame on the parents for immediately thinking that that was what Bri was. It really showed how we’re groomed as a society to see the worst in people, especially certain types of people. In her song, Bri put in that anger she felt from being pinned down helpless. She also added in a part about Kahlil from The Hate You Give and something about the Crowns and the song was just a huge jab towards everyone. I think at this point Bri was also just fed up at being treated the way she was; there’s only so much a person can take before they explode. This was Bri’s explosion. It was also her way of playing towards that ‘hoodlum rat’ or ‘drug dealer’ idea that people had of her. No matter what she did or said, Bri knew that people would always envision her as how they wanted to see her. No amount of dressing up in an innocent white dress, singing the Gospel was going to change that. So she felt like screw it, who cares what they think of me because at the end of the day, they’re not going to change their minds about who I am, so might as well just be who they want me to be. So she was that ‘hoodlum rat’ that rapped about guns and gangs and cops.
And boy did this song provoke soooo many people.
The power of words everyone.
Aunt Pooh, Jay (her mom), Trey (her brother), and Malik were all not the biggest fans of the lyrics and the type of message it sent about who Bri was. On the other hand, everyone in Garden Heights loved it and would sing it in the streets, in the bus, or during a protest. Heck even little kids on tiny trikes sang that song. When kids on the street started to sign On The Come Up and were rapping about guns and violence, Bri started to reevaluate the message and the words she put in her song because no kid should be singing those kinds of lyrics out loud.
But those thoughts got put on the back burner as more people outside of Garden Heights started to hear the song and thought it promoted violence and should be taken off of sound cloud. Many people were misinterpreting the song’s lyrics and were making these assumptions about Bri based on a video someone posted online from when Bri got pinned down for smuggling candy into school. But again, some parents thought she was an African American teenage girl who was trying to smuggle drugs. They thought she was this hoodlum rat without knowing the full story and it just goes back to that idea that no matter who Bri was or what she did, people would always be presumptuous about her. There was one woman though who really set Bri off to the point where she was saying expletives on a live stream—–her big screw you to the world.
Bri had a lot of anger at the world because she felt like it was unfair to her and her family. While everything was going on—–her recording a song and trying to make her come up—-Bri and her family were struggling to survive and pay the bills. Her mom, who Bri calls Jay, was an addict who left Bri and Trey at the dad’s mom’s house for a few years while she worked towards being clean.She was eight years clean and had worked hard to get her life back on track and that meant providing for her family. You know I really admired Jay because she used to be someone who was addicted to drugs and I could understand why because she went through the whole trauma of her husband being shot and being a part of that cycle people in Garden Heights went through, but I liked how she tried to change and change she did. She went through some real lows in life and I mean, don’t we all, but she didn’t let those low lows keep her down, but she got back up and tried to be better because she recognized that she had kids to take care of and a family to provide for. She worked jobs that she could keep and she tried to pay the bills whenever she could and she was trying. They weren’t the richest people on the block, but they were getting back. And even though things were hard, Jay still wanted the best for her kids. She wanted Bri to focus on school and do well on her ACT’s so that she could get into a good college and lead a better life than she did.
She also wanted Trey to go to medical school and continue his education because he already worked so hard and he didn’t deserve to just be working at a pizza shop with a four year degree. Something that was discussed a lot in this book: how no matter how hard you work towards a better life, sometimes you stay stuck in the same situation. Trey was also someone I liked because he’s very relatable. He’s the typical older brother who first leaves the house to go to college to do something more with his life. He had that four year degree, but once out of college he went back to Garden Heights and worked at Sal’s Pizza Shop because he couldn’t find other work and he needed to be there to take care of his family. I think part of him felt the need to be the man of the house because their dad wasn’t there and he knew he had to take care of Bri and the mom—-both of whom had different things going on in their life. He’s an honest to good son and he deserved so much more than a nine to five job.
But back to Jay’s character. She wasn’t really a mom in Bri’s eyes because whenever Bri looked at her, all she could see was Jay the drug addict. She only saw how her mother was on that park bench with red eyes or how her mom drove away and left her. Bri called her mom Jay because she was scared that her mom would relapse and leave again and she didn’t want to grow attached to her to the point of calling her a mom because of that fear. So Bri really held her mom at a distance and didn’t tell her a lot of what was going on with her music.
As much as Trey was a good brother though, Bri was a good daughter anyone could have. She knew the type of situation her family was in and how they couldn’t afford new Timberland shoes or a fancy meal and she wanted things to be better for her family. I think all of us can relate to that in how maybe we don’t come from the greatest situation and the most wealth in the world and we see our family barely getting by and we want to do something to help make the situation better. It takes a lot of understanding and maturity to place yourself outside the situation and to think how you can help. For Bri, her come up is how she felt like she could take her family from rags to riches. She really wanted to make a come up for herself because of her genuine love of rap, but also so that her family could live a better life. Jay wouldn’t have to work so hard to find a job because as a former drug addict not a lot of people hired her, and so that Trey could go to school and wouldn’t have to worry if they would be okay.
It was so heart wrenching to read how much the entire family was barely getting by. They didn’t have lights for a time and they always had a sparse kitchen, and I’m here thinking my cabinets are full and how thankful and lucky I am to have the life that I do. Sometimes we take things for granted way too much. Then Jay had to go lose her job and things got even harder from there. What I appreciated though was the fact that Jay acknowledged she needed help and she wasn’t ashamed to get the help when they needed it. Some people are kind of prideful about that sort of thing and they don’t want to admit that they’re having a hard time because that seems embarrassing, especially with Jay’s mother in law and how she never thought highly of Jay, but Jay wasn’t like that. Jay never accepted money easily from the mother-in-law, but she did accept help from the food bank during Thanksgiving because they didn’t have much food. I also thought it kind of sad, yet admirable that Jay would give up her college education so that their family would be eligible for food stamps because things were that hard. But that brings me to another thing I forgot, Jay went to school all this time while trying to take care of her kids and get her life back on track, which I think is such a commendable thing.
“We’re ruined for life,” Jay says. “Sounds about right.”
“You mean sounds about white,” says Aunt Gina . . .
(pg. 102)
And life was beyond difficult because of the things they had to deal with partially because of their skin color and situation.
There’s one person in the family I never touched on yet, but who was also such a pivotal part of the family: Aunt Pooh. I still don’t understand why her name was Aunt Pooh. Did she like Winnie the Pooh growing up or something? I don’t know. But she was an interesting person. Bri really looked up to her as an older sister because she would confide in Aunt Pooh about her rap career and Aunt Pooh was actually the person to help her get her come up. Aunt Pooh was a good person with good intentions, but I think that the situation she was in. Everyone in Garden Heights was either doing good or not doing good. People who made an honest living like Jay and Trey had a hard time, but people like Aunt Pooh got by easier. Aunt Pooh sold drugs and Bri didn’t really like that and would encourage Aunt Pooh to stop at any given time, but Aunt Pooh never really did that because that’s how she got by, and she got by well. Aunt Pooh would be the one to give food to Jay and the kids when they didn’t have anything and as much as she was making good money, Jay wasn’t going to resort to that sort of life because she’s been through that whole thing before.
Aunt Pooh was someone who would do anything for her family. Even if it meant beating someone up to do it. She was a strong woman who I had a lot of respect for in regards to how protective she was of her family. Would I harm someone to protect my family? Not really—–I’m not for violence. But Aunt Pooh would. During Christmas, Bri received this gold crown chain that her dad used to wear when he rapped. So Bri wore it as a pride of honor of being her dad and to keep a part of him with her while she tried to get her come up. Her mom didn’t really want her wearing the thing around town because it screamed mug me to people who would pawn it for money. Trey wanted Bri to trade it in for money too. In a way it was their last resort safety net if worse came to worse.
Bri didn’t get mugged for wearing the chain, but she did get threatened at gunpoint with her friend Malik when they were walking down the street. She should have tucked that chain in her shirt. But gosh it really hurt my heart that someone in a neighborhood would openly hold a gun to a kid’s head for a freaking gold chain?! Like where are people’s sense of moral compassion? That guy should have left her alone.
Bri had to give up the chain to save herself and Malik. When giving up the chain, I felt like it was an overall loss for Bri and her family because not only did she lose something that linked her to her dad, but she also lost that safety net and to Bri I think that hurt more because of how badly their family was doing.
After getting threatened, Bri goes straight to her Aunt Pooh because she knew that her Aunt Pooh would do something about it. So Aunt Pooh does and she goes all MIA for days, worrying Bri. Aunt Pooh would usually be gone for days at a time when she sold, but this time it was this lingering fear of what she was doing in order to protect Bri or what she was doing to get the chain back. Aunt Pooh showed up one day all casually like nothing happened, but she didn’t get the chain back. One thing led to another and a SWAT team arrived and arrested the GD (Garden Disciples) for dealing drugs. So now Aunt Pooh was in prison. Jay and Bri went to visit her, but while there the mom came to the revelation that she wouldn’t bail Aunt Pooh out that easily. I mean who wouldn’t bail their own family member out of prison? But I understood where Jay was coming from because she knew Aunt Pooh was in deep with selling drugs and that if she came out of prison, she would keep selling them and she wouldn’t have learned her lesson. She wanted Pooh to change for herself and to realize that she had to stop selling and to make a living doing a regular job so that she didn’t end up back behind cells. I think it was such a tough love moment, but sometimes it’s what a person needs in order to realize that maybe the tough love is coming from a good place and that maybe I have to see why that person decided to give me the tough love. It was hard for Bri to walk away from Aunt Pooh and leave her there—-it felt like leaving her big sister to rot—-but I think that Aunt Pooh really did need to see that she could be so much more than just selling and that she had to change if she wanted to make a difference in herself and her own life.
Aunt Pooh used to be Bri’s manager, but with her selling drugs and now in prison, she couldn’t really be that person for Bri anymore. So Bri’s manager was Supreme. He bribed her with new shoes. If the shoe fits right? It kind of sucked how when running away from the SWAT team moment, Bri ended up breaking her new expensive shoes. Darn. 😆
I really didn’t like Supreme. He was too much of a wannabe big shot who flashed his riches and his extravagances to everyone to prove that he had money. We get it. And I didn’t like how controlling and overbearing he was of Bri. When Bri went with supreme to an actual recording studio, she was ecstatic because it made her feel like she was finally making it. She was so nervous about what song she would rap, but when she got there this other artist under Supreme, Dee, strolled in with a rap she made about some rats and PMSing and I was like nope, nope, nope. That song is not Bri. Who the heck raps about PMSing and making the rap end with “I make chicks bleed.” A perverted sicko boy who doesn’t understand what having a period actually means! That’s beyond nasty. Bri was like I’m not going to rap this, but if she didn’t then that would kind of be like giving up on her only chance when this hot shot record producer and Supreme were wanting her to rap this PMS song. Bri knew that this was her only chance to do something and in that moment I could feel that visceral feeling in her heart between what she wanted to do and what she knew she had to do. I loved how Angie Thomas described how Bri felt as if she was an animal in a zoo, told to do tricks while people stared at her. She was told to play the part and she did. And when the chapter ends with:
“I’m suddenly in an exhibit, and there’s a room full of people waiting for me to entertain them. I have to say what they want me to say. Be what they want me to be. The worst part? I do it.”
(pg. 384)
I think being in that studio really made Bri start to rethink what it meant to play this role people assumed of her. She always thought that she would have to give into the role of the hoodlum rat and suddenly now seeing it from the inside out, she didn’t want to play that role anymore because I think she was slowly realizing that this hoodlum rat persona she put on wasn’t truly her and that people got the wrong message about her and that’s why they assumed she would be okay doing the rap she was now. But Bri’s voice was so much more purposeful than PMSing and “making chicks bleed.”
She was so much more.
But Bri didn’t know who she was.
She thought she was the hoodlum rat. She was told she was Little Law.
But she learned that she wasn’t any of that. She was a collection of different things. I loved the moment when she went to the Ring at the end and someone told her “What? So [you] can end up like your daddy?” And Bri was like “I’m not him” She wasn’t her dad. I always felt like Bri getting called Lil’ Law was unfair because everyone around her named her before she could create a name for herself. And I liked that she finally realized that she didn’t have to live up to being Lil’ Law, but that she could be herself. And when she was sitting at the dinner table with her family she saw that she was someone that encompassed all the good qualities of those who loved her and that they learned to be themselves by encompassing some of Bri’s qualities too. People influence people for the better.
“If I’m nothing else, I’m them, and they’re me.
(pg. 425)
That’s more than enough.”
You’re more than enough too. 💙
Things were looking up for Bri and things were looking up for the whole family.
The mother-in-law and Jay finally put aside their differences to see that they want what’s best for the kids in the end. And what was best for them was a functioning home So the family was going to move in with the mother-in-law, so that Jay could save up money with her new job working at Bri’s school and so that Trey could go back to school. I really liked this resolution because it made the mother-in-law and Jay reconcile and let bygones be bygones. It also showed a lot of maturity on their part to realize that the kid’s health and happiness mattered most. I liked this plan because Jay could go back to school and still work and make money so maybe one day they could move out. I also liked how Jay encouraged Trey to go back to school because deep down Trey wanted to. Heck, he applied to different grad schools and got in, but he said he didn’t want to go because he was worried about his family first. What a sweet son! But the mom knew that grad school was his dream and it would lead to a better life for her son and I loved that she told him to chase his dreams. I also enjoyed the brother-sister moments between Trey and Bri and how he would look out for her. He told the mom that if she was telling him to follow his dream, as much as Bri’s dream can be co
The mom realized that she couldn’t stop Bri from her come up if she just told Trey that he should have his. I think we all want our parents to support what we do and as parents I can see how hard that might be when a career path is risky, but sometimes you have to go after what you want and try to see what happens. If you don’t try, you don’t know what might have been.
My absolute favorite part of this book was the conversation between Jay and Bri in the driveway of the mother-in-law’s house. For Bri that driveway was nothing but a bad memory because Jay left her and Trey there all those years ago. Bri only saw that day from her perspective and how her mother left her, but she never saw it from her mom’s perspective. Hearing how that was a hard day for her too, made Bri realize that she did it for them and how much Jay was truly sorry for leaving them. As a kid you don’t really understand why a parent leaves or does something considered as wrong until you step back and see that the parent is only human and sometimes they need space to take care of themselves before they can take care of you. And sometimes they leave and don’t come back and it’s hard to see them walk away, but sometimes it’s for the best. This was one of those times. But this time Jay came back and she changed. I loved that.
“‘It’s okay. I also know that it’s hard for you to trust that I won’t end up on drugs again. I get it. But I hope you know that every single day, my goal is to be here for you.’
I knew it was a daily fight for her to stay clean. I just didn’t realize I was the reason she fights.”
(pg. 414)
How are you not in tears? 😢
If that didn’t have you in tears, the moment that Bri called Jay mom, was UGGGGGH! The BEST! She finally felt like Jay was her mom and that she loved her enough not to leave again. It took a long time and a long way for Bri to say that and it warmed my heart. Jay was crying, I was crying, are you crying?
The book ended like how it started: with a rap at the Ring. I thought that was a great idea. I loved how Trey went with her this time and tried to act all big brotherly and protect her. While there she was supposed to do the rap that the record producer wrote for her, but remembering all the things that had happened to her within the span of this book, she realized that a PMS song wasn’t what she wanted to use her voice for. When Bri spits fire, she spits it into the rain! I think Angie Thomas has a real career as a songwriter for rappers. Maybe she could go on America’s Got Talent and rap, wouldn’t that be beyond cool?! I’d vote for her. If there was America’s Got Talent in the fiction world, Bri should definitely go there too. I loved how she rapped something that came from the heart because isn’t that what music is about—–an expression of the heart. Music is subjective and controversial, not everyone’s going to like it, but I feel like if you create music you love and that you believe in, that’s all that matters.
In the epilogue, Bri’s with her boyfriend Curtis, doing guess what? Studying for the ACT’s. If I’m being honest, as much as you can study for the ACT’s, it’ll only help you so much. I didn’t have fun studying for it, but then again who does? But Bri had her boyfriend to make ‘studying’ more fun. I loved how Trey walked by her room and caught them not studying and called them out on it. I liked how Jay wasn’t even near the room and she told them to get back to studying. I loved Jay’s mother’s instincts and how she knew if her daughter was up to no good. She’s honestly such a good mom and a person. While ‘studying’ gets a tweet from some unnamed celebrity artist to do a collar piece. She was finally getting her come up.
I kind of wonder who the unnamed artist was? Who do you think it was? How cool would it be if it was Drake or Cardi B or Nicki Manj?
Anyway, if you read this book, what was your favorite part? Least favorite part? Favorite line from a rap that Bri sings? Let me know below in the comments as I love hearing from you all 💕
Be thankful and grateful for what you have in life and know that you’re good intentioned dreams are worth striving towards. If you work hard to achieve your dreams, you’ll get your come up. I know it.
And as always, with love,
Rating
4.64 Full Bloom Flower
Characters: Every character in this book has a unique complexity and story line that makes them different and relatable. There truly is someone here in this story that you can find a voice through.
Plot: If you love the power and message of music, this book is one that will make you realize just how impactful words are. It’ll also put in perspective the realities and hardships that some people face in this world. It’s a sad truth, but it’s a truth that we need to be more aware of so that as people we can help each other live the types of lives we all deserve—–happy and prosperous.
Writing: Angie Thomas can write, but she can make raps like nothing too 😄
Romance: Cute romances that give you just enough romance for a contemporary book. I don’t think this book was about romantic kind of love so much as family love—the best kind.