About the Book

Your fate arrives in a box on your doorstep. Do you open it?

It’s the decision of a lifetime. It seems like just another morning. You make a cup of tea. Check the news. Open the front door. On your doorstep is a box. Inside the box is the exact number of years you have left to live. The same box appears on every doorstep across the world.

The Measure is a transfixing contemplation of fate, a piercing exploration of how we value our lives, and a soaring story of love and heartbreak. When the world shifts irrevocably overnight, each character is faced with an immense decision. As boxes open across the world, their lives intertwine in moving, unexpected ways. An unforgettable story of love, resilience, and hope. Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, David Nicholls, Matt Haig and Stuart Turton.

About the Author

Nikki Erlick’s writing has appeared on the websites of New York Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan and The Huffington Post. She graduated Harvard University summa cum laude and is a former editor of The Harvard Crimson. She earned a master’s degree in Global Thought from Columbia University. The Measure is her debut novel. @nikkierlick @BoroughPress

What I Thought

When publishers talk about high concept, this book is exactly what they mean. And this concept does deliver in the telling too.

Told from multiple points of views (8) but from a series of people who are connected or becoming connected throughout the story. Each with a distinctive voice.

The opening of the story hit very close to home and I’d be interested to know how much of the story was influenced by the pandemic. The discussion felt very real about how we accept or face up to our risk of mortality, how much we accept or mitigate risk.

The concept was so spooky. That one day everyone who is 22 and over gets a box on their doorstep. Maybe Terry Pratchett’s Death got fed up of playing the Hogfather and decided to deliver everybody their life expectancy! Children are exempted from this knowledge until the day they reach 22. Is this a gift or a curse to them?

In Adam Silvera’s They Both Die at the End people only find out their fate on the day that they will die, here people are given notice but what will they do with it?

We follow the characters as they decide whether or not to open their boxes, initially not understanding what the strings inside mean and then how they deal with the fate they have been given. Some with hope and others with despair – and not always in the way you’d expect.

Society is quickly divided into short-stringers and long-stringers and both groups have their challenges.

Human connection sees them reach out to others with the same experience and it sees them keep living their everyday lives because, until it does, life doesn’t stop. Births, marriages, death, loss.

This is one of those philosophical books that makes excellent book group material because it touches on what are fundamental questions to humanity. I highly recommend it, although trigger warning wise it won’t always be the right time for people to read something like this. As with the best of books there is hope amongst any despair that features heavy topics and you will get attached to characters – with all lengths of strings. How long will they be with the reader? Like people, as long as they remain in our memories and hearts!

Thanks to Tracy at Compulsive Readers working with Anne Cater at Random Things Tours – and the publishers – for the gifted ARC for the purposes of an honest review. Do check out what everyone else on the tour thought too and tell me below – would you open your box?