Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - The Nickel Boys

Picked this book up a couple years ago and had a hard time getting into it. Decided to give it another go since a film adaptation is coming out and it is The Stacks Book Club pick this month. And boy, am I glad that I was pushed to try reading this again. This book is worth every bit of the Pulitzer Prize that it won.

Absolutely haunting and maddening. Colson Whitehead really packs a punch in well under 300 pages. I will be processing this story and the ending for quite a while.

Content Warnings

nadia's review against another edition

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dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.25

This, my first Whitehead, is a really good book, covering harrowing subject matter. I'm not sure the narration style was my favourite though. While it started strong, I ended up finding it a little dull at times, and I often had to reread sentences/paragraphs, thinking I'd missed something. Overall, the writing quality was great and towards the end of the book the pace picked up and I was swiftly turning those pages!

Content Warnings

mr_e_staley's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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jaaay_reads's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

This was a good book. It has many topics that can be hard for some to read so definitely look up content warnings.

I think Elwood is a character that in this story is actually served by not really having a character arc. It was his sturdiness in all that was happening that was really admirable.

Maybe it was because I was listening to an audiobook, but my only real critique was that there were times when we changed scenes, and it was a different character or plotline being talked about, and it took me a moment to understand what was happening. Nothing terrible, but I wish there had been some smoother transitions between the changes in perspective.

Content Warnings

skallywag2232's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

This is a story that needed to be told, and I appreciate the author’s attempt, but I feel that it needed more. This is a rare case where I believe 100 more pages would have gone a long way to telling the story in a way that truly does it justice.

Content Warnings