Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Dear Martin

Dear Martin by Nic Stone is an important YA story that easily explains the implications of racism in the US. Even though this is a short book, I think this story is easily digestible, which is important for communicating complex issues like racial injustice, profiling, and police brutality towards people of color. I really loved the character dynamics, and the way that character grew over the course of this book. Again, though it’s not long, it packs a lot of information and emotion into the pages. You can feel the frustration coming off the characters and I certainly believe that this book should be studied when talking about the state of racial relations in this country. This book is approachable no matter what your view point is, and I think it could do a lot to change the perspectives of people who hold views/act like Jared and his friends. No one has to remain ignorant, and everyone, even people who have been wrong in the past (which I think is a key takeaway from this book) has the potential to change for the better with more education and information.

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paulabekkerus's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-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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nannahnannah's review against another edition

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fast-paced

Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

Okay, don’t get me wrong. This book and the topics it covers are very important (antiblackness, police brutality, the different responses to black boys being killed by cops, among others), but the writing is not strong. That's obviously not a very popular opinion, though, and I’ll never be upset that something like this has gotten so popular.

Representation:
- the main protagonist is Black
- two secondary protagonists and a love interest are also Black
- another love interest is Jewish

(the Goodreads summary is awful … it spoils the book!)

Justyce McAllister grew up in a rough neighborhood and is well acquainted with antiblackness and police brutality, but as a student in a fancy prep school destined for the Ivy League, he never thought something like what he hears about in the news could happen to him. He’s not one of those Black boys. But when he tries to help his drunk, light-skinned ex home after a party, a cop assumes he’s assaulting a white woman and puts him in handcuffs for three hours. After the incident, Justyce’s life and worldview are no longer the same. He starts seeing antiblackness everywhere and begins to write to Martin Luther King Jr. in an experiment to discover if MLK’s teachings still have relevance in the modern day.

What I particularly like is the story showing (through news clippings and articles) the way black victims of police brutality are demonized in the media. It feels very authentic, and a lot like what has really happened in real life. There are consequences for every action, even if the consequence doesn’t feel justified.

But while I think the topics of this book are incredibly important--and I very much like the idea of the protagonist writing letters to MLK as a way to find his own self and as a way to cope with racism he’s experiencing--I think the execution doesn’t at all do the concepts justice. I'm not sure Justyce's writing to MLK as an "experiment", especially to see if MLK's teachings of nonviolence have relevance, really come through.

Most of all the reason for my rating is the writing itself. In many places, the prose dissolves into a script format, sometimes only for one or two lines of dialogue before reverting back into prose. There are even actions marked in parentheses. The result is something that seems like the author jotting down ideas to come back and edit later.

“Ain’t no amount of money nor intelligence can change that shit.”
Jared: Hey, man, that’s not true. You don’t ev--
“Shut UP, Jared!” (This from Surfer-Tyler.) “Let’s just leave, bro.”
Trey: Sounds like a great idea to me.

But since this story is largely about important conversations about race, I can in a way see how this kind of format could be highlighting that theme, especially in classroom scenes where the novel abandons prose altogether and adopts the script format. With the exception of the actions in parentheses (which feel really strange, and more like a teen writing something than writing for teens), it works okay there. But otherwise, without beats, or anything to signify tone other than caps and italics, things start to sound over dramatic and confusing.

Speaking of caps and italics, the author seems to want to add every YA-style formatting gimmick there is. There’s lots of all-cap text alongside italics, sections of different fonts (even though that’s appropriate), different formatting, lots of onomatopoeias, etc. All of that together creates writing that feels juvenile, even if the topics and the scenes absolutely are anything but.

I also wish the book had left out the sexism and misogyny, especially from Justyce’s PoV. If this is what authors need to include to have it “connect” or sound like real teenage boys, we uhh, have a problem.

But all that said, I particularly liked the letters Justyce wrote to MLK Jr. Those letters came off to me as the most genuine parts of the book. And there were scenes that moved me, and one I teared up at. It’s not a terrible book, I just didn’t like or connect with the writing style. I wish the series and the author all the best, though!

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pjv's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

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criticalgayze's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

I want to be up front that Dear Martin was a pick for a grad school class, so I had to finish this book; otherwise, I would've DNFed and left it without much of a review.

Because I finished this, and especially because it was for a class on reading and evaluating texts when planning high school curricula, I did want to get into it a little bit.

My greatest issue with this book is that it lacks nuance. It is an introspectionless tour of all the trauma Black people, especially Black male teens, can face in this country. Justyce is put through trauma after trauma without processing any of it, both internal or on a larger social scale. I think this is exasperated by a poor editorial decision not to put this one entirely in first-person narrative. This lack of introspection is extra weird when given all of Justyce's avenues for exploration: he's in the prep school progressive "Societal Evolutions" class, he's on the debate team, AND his best friend's mom is a mental health care specialist. All of this leads me to believe the lack of reflective pieces was likely also a poor editorial call to slim down the narrative to be "intense" or something.

Oh, and these boys are also gross about girls. Listen, I get the possible over-sexualization of young people and the hormones and the wealth and class patriarchal elements and the whatever else of it all, but as an educator, I don't hear young boys talking like this about girls to this extent. And, even if they are, you would think a book by an adult, especially a femme author, would want to portray at least one of these male characters as progressive on this front. It's some nausea-inducing that one of the last lines of the book is the main character talking about how his girlfriend is going to "have [his] babies," which caused this one to end on a bitter note for me.

In the book's favor, the tight, "action-filled" plot is propulsive, and the book's middle was successful at pulling on my heart strings, but it still wasn't enough to redeem this one for me.

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strange's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

This book had a lot of good things to say, and I think it did a very good job of exploring these topics, especially towards readers who may have been a bit naïve towards the subjects at play (this book is YA, and therefore targeted towards teens still learning about how race plays into our society). But everything that wasn't social commentary was... unremarkable. The romance and love triangle felt unnecessary, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were something added in later on in order to make the book more marketable as a more conventional YA Contemporary. The rest of the book makes up for it, but every time romance came into play it felt more like a dramatic teen show than the insightful novel it had proven itself to be. That, and the fact that I think it could have been a bit longer and more drawn out, is what brings down the star rating for me a bit.

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