Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - Dear Martin

I liked the book, and I read it in two days, just didn't find anything super duper original about it, and the writing letters to MLK Jr wasn't as big an aspect as I thought it would be. Would definitely recommend reading it though, was still an amazing read. Really made me think.

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ghostlyprince's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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chaoticnostalgia's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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kyrstin_p1989's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.5

Touching story about growing up Black, trying to better your situation, and the issues that can arise. This story is tragic yet hopeful and shines a light on the ways that racism is both a domino effect in communities of color and a cyclical phenomenon that affects people of all races.

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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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mandi4886's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense 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? Yes

5.0

Everyone needs to read this book!

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