No spoiler overview

Overnight, everyone in the world over 22 receives a box. The box tells them, “The measure of your life lies within,” and inside is a string that shows how long they will live. Quickly, society devolves into long-stringers versus short-stringers, and a group who choose not to look at all. We follow several different narrators who have their lives completely changed by this appearance, no matter what camp they fall in.

The premise of this book is interesting and unique. It feels relevant to what we deal with today, despite it being a completely different situation. It highlights that there are always people who want to make the best of it for everyone, and those who want to make the most of it for themselves.

While this has a sci-fi angle to it, don’t expect to get any answers about where the strings come from and why. Those details fade into the background quickly; the main focus is on the people and what they do with this new world.

This is Erlick’s debut novel, and I’m hopeful for more unique ideas from her.

Full review

While the premise is differentiated, I didn’t love the execution. There are so many narrators that we follow (I can’t even tell you how many), and it made things hard to keep track of at first. I had to start writing out the characters in the back of the book for myself to keep it straight. Then sometimes, there are random third person chapters thrown in between everything, which completely fall off toward the end. I feel like we could have had a more impactful story with two or three POVs, and a more thoughtful use of the third person zoom-out.

The writing also overly-explained things, in my opinion. Instead of letting the reader get there, we were told outright what to think about every situation.

That being said, this book begs reflection on some big questions. Personally, I found myself wondering how religion comes into play.

• If we all have a pre-set date that we’re set to die, does that mean we also have a pre-set fate? Or do we have free will, within our given time?
• For what reason would a god would want everyone to know the length of their lifespan?
• Would you still want to believe in a god in this type of world, where something so big gets dropped one day with no further explanation?

While it was not my favorite writing, these are the types of reflections that I love from a good story. I have thought about this book and these questions a good amount after finishing it.

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