Reviews with content warning for Gun violence - Dear Martin

Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

113 reviews

emmaa_andrews's review against another edition

5.0

emotional inspiring reflective sad 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

Content Warnings

criticalgayze's review against another edition

2.5

challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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.

Content Warnings

mishale1's review against another edition

4.5

emotional hopeful 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: No

Wow, this book pulls you right in and doesn’t let you go.

At the very beginning of this book Justyce has a terrifying incident with a cop.
Justyce was trying to prevent his ex girlfriend from driving drunk. He went out in the middle of the night to help her. He got her safely into the backseat of her car and got her keys. He was planning to drive her home and a cop saw him and practically (directly? I don’t remember) accused him of kidnapping her.
Soon Justyce was on the ground, handcuffed, with an aggressive white cop who had already decided Justyce was guilty of something.

To try to help himself deal with this incident, Justyce started writing letters to Martin Luther King Jr. he poured his heart out about his life and the world.

Justyce is a really kind, gentle soul. It absolutely breaks your heart watching what he goes through.

Things get much worse but I won’t border on spoilers.

The entire time, Justyce is trying to make sense of the world.

It’s a very emotionally read. I hope a lot of people read it and think about what these characters and people in the real world go through.

I’m not sure what I can say to explain how good this book is. Maybe just the fact that I sat down to start reading the book and never actually put it down. I just read all the way through till the end without stopping and immediately made a plan to order the second book.

Content Warnings

theasbookworld's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

Content Warnings

kathis_wonderland's review against another edition

4.5

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring 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: Yes

Dear Martin by Nic Stone is about Justyce, who is unjustly handcuffed by a white cop. From this day on, he realizes that even though he goes to a good school, he can't escape racism and injustices. He starts to study the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to see if he can somehow apply his doings in his own life. But more bad things happen and people are murdered.

I wanted to read this book for a very long time. It reminded me of THUG but was different in so many aspects as well. What BIPoCs have to face every single day is devastating and a crime. No human being should be discriminated. No matter what. Reading books like this break my heart on so many levels. But is important to get this reality out there more. I learn something new every time I read a book. And I learn even more when it is about a topic that I am personally not affected by. This book helped me to broaden my horizon even more and to keep on calling out racist people and content.

I really liked the concept of the journal that Justyce writes. He is trying to apply concepts to his own life, which is good for learning. The entries give a great insight into Justyce's life and how he is thinking about the world. Jared is one character I absolutely hated! He talked about reverse racism and how he was the one being discriminated. He only saw his mistakes towards the end as he realized that ALL BIPoCs experience racism, even when they are the "good" BIPoCs. Even though the second half of the book was really heartbreaking and unjust, I liked how the book ended. It showed that people can change. Beliefs can change. But you have to be willing to open your eyes and listen to the experiences of people and believe them!

This book gives a strong message to its readers. The story is heartbreaking and shows perfectly that America has a problem with gun violence and racism (but that is also a problem for all of the world). I can highly recommend it to everyone! Really liked it.

Content Warnings