Reviews

The Measure by Nikki Erlick

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cpape129's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

3.75

mrseshleman's review against another edition

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slow-paced

bookchik15's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective slow-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? It's complicated

3.75

perusinghannah's review against another edition

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3.5

Set in a version of our world where people one day receive a string which represents the remaining length of their lives, The Measure did an overall fine job of exploring the impact this would have on people through multiple, loosely interlinked points of view.

Personally, however, I had hoped for something with a little more bite to it. I love ethics, this was such a fantastic premise for debates of this nature, and yet I found this book very closely mirrored the prejudice we all already know and (hopefully) loathe instead. The author could have truly focused the novel on the originality of this particular reality, but unfortunately I found a lot of the political considerations too much of a regurgitation of real, current day issues. Only with the (at times slightly cheesy) addition of the whole "let's live life to the fullest, love conquers all" type deal.

Its not that the characters we got weren't good, and I did enjoy how they were interwoven, but here, too, some had a lot more depth than others. I do think the author managed to catch people's self-centeredness and even cowardice in a very realistic and plausible manner, but there were also characters that were so flatly on the wrong side of history that their point of view wasn't actually that interesting to read from.

So unfortunately a bit of a mixed bag that didn't dig deep enough for my liking, but where the positives did manage to outweigh the negatives in the end. I'm curious to see what kind of work the author will come out with next.