For college students, even our summers off can tend to be busy, but between classes, jobs, internships, and everything else, we all still need to find a way to relax. For me, that has always been reading.

My first summer read this year was Angie Thomas's "The Hate U Give," and I can honestly say that it is the best novel I've read in years. The novel follows sixteen-year-old Starr Carter as she bounces back and forth between the two worlds she knows: Garden Heights, the poor black neighborhood in which she lives, and the upscale, preppy neighborhood in which her private high school is located.

She walks the line carefully between these two different versions of herself, ensuring that they never overlap, but when the death of her childhood best friend Khalil, another victim of police brutality, sparks national attention, Starr finds her two worlds colliding. Readers sit back and watch as she tries to introduce her two selves to each other, and become one person--honest and confident in herself and her values.

This novel is not only a touching and relatable coming of age story, but it also has one other feature that makes it an extremely valuable read. It examines and details the ways in which the media, and on a larger scale: society, deal with issues of police brutality, gang activity, and general institutionalized racism.

Thomas creates characters that readers can naturally connect with. Within each character is a strong sense of identity, a love for family, and a desire to belong. And because these are traits that we can all identify with, even members of violent, criminal gangs become relatable, and in some ways even lovable. Thomas writes characters who we as readers can respect, which makes it all the more painful when we lose them.

The most important thing Thomas does in her debut novel is highlight a pressing social issue that many of us like to sweep under the rug, due to its delicate nature and the divided opinions on it.

She confronts us with our country's plague of institutionalized racism. In humanizing the people we might commonly refer to as "thugs," Thomas reminds us that we are all part of the same world, even though we come from different corners of it.

I always considered myself a rather open-minded person, but after reading "The Hate U Give", I can see where societal tendencies towards racism had even made their way into my life. This novel has changed my outlook, and I think it can change yours too. "The Hate U Give" is an inspiring and heart-wrenching story that our nation needs to be told. So, do yourself a favor, and pick up a copy before you head back this fall.