Book Review: The Measure by Nikki Erlick
A novel about some serious ethical questions and a lot of built upon sympathy for its characters, check out my full review for The Measure by Nikki Erlick below!
Book Information
It’s a normal day in the world until mysterious boxes appear in front of everyone’s doors who are at least 22 or older. Inside, there is a string that claims to measure the length of its owner’s life. As chaos, segregation due to string length, and scientific “explanations” for the strings ensue, people who have short strings (and therefore, short lives) and people who have long strings must find a way to coexist again. Between stereotyping, judging, isolating, and other forms of othering, many people find out who they truly are whether it’s for the best or the absolute worst.
Review | Heidi Dischler
I really really enjoyed this book. It was a book club pick for my book club, and while some didn’t enjoy it, a majority of us did. What I liked the most? That it made you question society. This book makes you think about the way we act (or don’t act) and how messed up it can be. Judging each other based off of gender and skin color? It’s the same thing that the other brings up when it comes to judging each other based off of string size. You’re a short-stringer, you obviously are volatile and violent and can’t be trusted because you have nothing left to live for. LITERAL RIDICULOUSNESS. I can’t even fathom why we’re so judgement in the first place. We’re all human. We all bleed the same. It makes no sense.
Anywayyy, off of my high horse and to the review. The things I liked: ethical questions, faith in humanity, and the plot/setup as a whole. Things I didn’t necessarily love: the characters, any development/lack of character arcs, lack of solid plot/story.
I loved how many ethical questions this book raised obviously (if you couldn’t tell from the first paragraph). When my brain gets to work overtime like that and seriously contemplate humans and humanity as a whole, I’m in love. A lot of the general ideas and propulsion towards the conclusion also raises faith in humanity for me just imagining that we would make such decisions for the greater good. I always like to see the bright side of things, and so imagining that we could potentially overcome our biases and grow together makes my heart sing. Not to mention, the entire setup and storyline of the book was amazing. The strings and how they impacted society was a really cool idea and made for a fun read.
Now, onto the things I didn’t like. My main pet peeve with this book is that it wasn’t so much of a “story” as it was a moral “question”. Yes, there were many different characters with different plots connecting them all, but none of them were really developed in my opinion. I didn’t think there were any arcs and the ones that did have arcs felt superficial. So, that leads into the lack of solid plot/story. What I mean with this isn’t the lack of a good storyline like this book has with the strings. I mean it lacks a solid story with its characters. The one surefire way I always know that a book doesn’t have developed characters or plots for its characters is when I don’t feel anything for them at the end. Some characters obviously die because they have “short strings”, but I’ll be honest here, I really didn’t care or feel anything for them.
Overall, despite the lack of character development and character plots, I really enjoyed this book. I would rate it a 4.5 out of 5 specifically because I loved all of the moral questions and dilemmas it posed. Many people I know wouldn’t like this book because its lack of character development and more of an “idea” centered book. Me, however? I loved how it was concept-driven. So, the real question becomes, would you open your box to see the length of your string?
Source: Audiobook from Libby Public Library
(P.S. You can read tons of books—including ones written by me—by trying a free trial of Kindle Unlimited!)
