Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

The Measure by Nikki Erlick

88 reviews

meganemarshall's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad 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

5.0

Be prepared to cry... alot. I bawled my eyes out multiple times while reading. I was gripped in the beginning. This is NOT a sci-fi book!! It isn't about the boxes but about how people react to them. Not only do you read about 8 people whose lives are intertwined, but how the world as a whole deals with the strings. What would you do if you had a short string or a long string? How do people view you if they know the length of your string? Will people discriminate based on string length?

The book is very character-driven well. Erlick did an incredible job at making me emotionally connect to all these characters even though I knew the lengths of their strings, so I knew who had happy endings and sad endings. I also really loved how everyone was connected somehow. A person from Hank's story pops up in other people's stories, and vice versa.

There's a lot of deep conversation in the book about how to live your life, as while as discussions of hope, mortality, faith, discrimination, love, marriage, etc. I think the book showed that all life has meaning, that no matter what you do during your life or how you die or what happens afterwards, you still touch all the people around you, and your live affects their choices which moves others, etc. Hank's storyline really shows this and was my favorite.
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greenlivingaudioworm's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious 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

4.5

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stijlwaters's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective 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? Yes

3.75

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nightstitch96's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-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? It's complicated

4.5

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agreen1727's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

There were a ton of characters and story lines to keep straight. I like the overall idea of the book and the messages you can take away from it. The ending had a part that was pretty sad that I didn’t see coming. I feel like the timeline through the book moved at a very odd pace even though all the info needed was there. I’m not really sure how I feel about the book overall. I didn’t dislike it but I also didn’t love it. 
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housleysc's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

The premise of the book is fascinating and thought-provoking. It kept my attention very easily. Each character had a distinct voice, which made the narration easy to follow. The downsides to this book for me are:
  • Death is a main character. I had a nightmare about two loved ones dying when I neared the end of the book. Clearly the book affected me on a subconscious level. The premise is pretty heavy.
  • The characters are distinct, but I don’t feel like there was much arc to them. The characters who did change did so very predictably.
  • It felt a little heavy-handed at times, like the author didn’t trust the reader to form a humane opinion or to remember an important detail. (I predicted a plot point early on because the author kept bringing the same bit of info up every time a certain character’s story rolled around.)
  • It all wrapped up too neatly for my taste. It would’ve gotten a 4.0 from me if it weren’t for this one…
All in all, it was an engaging read and a really good thought experiment. I appreciated the overall message of quality over quantity. 
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gsmallwood63's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.5

This book is very interesting in that one major event/change changed how the world functioned and how people are perceived and perceive others.  
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emilywemily6's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring 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? It's complicated

5.0

This book was incredible. I could not put it down! This book contains many deeper themes that are reminiscent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made this book feel very personal for me and almost triggering as I remembered the strife of that global event. So if the pandemic is a hard topic for you still this book might be difficult emotionally because of the parallels. But this book was reflective and meaningful and emotional, and I have no regrets that I went on this journey. Told through multiple POVs that intersect at moments throughout the book, this book made me feel for and love every character. This book was surprisingly human and realistic; I forgot I wasn’t living the string reality they faced. The societal issues related to the divisive nature of the strings were portrayed really well through the lens of the multiple POVs. I loved the discussions on discrimination and prejudice and the ties with both history and current examples of discrimination. This book was beautiful and heartbreaking and gave me a lot to think about my own life and what it would mean to know how long I have to live, or how long my family has. If you need a good cry with some hope, this book is for you.
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karinreadsalot's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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catsandbooksandcoffee's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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