The Measure by Nikki Erlick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was a time filler for me. I listened to the audiobook and the reader was decent, but the story itself was too fanciful to get behind. Boxes show up on everybody’s doorstep, tent, cabin, etc., containing a string that indicated how long they will live. This happens worldwide with no one seeing how these boxes got delivered or why. So this is pure fantasy, not science fiction. It’s really nothing more than a thought experiment for the reader. If you got a box like that, would you open it? If you did and got a short string would you live your life differently? A long string? What if your spouse got one opposite of yours, and so on. The book is populated with characters having all the possible scenarios and all or most of the possible reactions – some with long strings doing reckless things as they feel invulnerable, some dumping their short string fiance, etc. There’s no real plot and the characters were too stereotyped to be credible. Still, it was inoffensive and at times thought-provoking. It was good enough to play solitaire to.