literary gluttony

Imagine this: you wake up one morning to find a small, nondescript box on your doorstep. No return address. No note. Inside? A string. Its length, as you quickly learn, reveals exactly how long you’ll live. Everyone in the world receives one. No one is spared.

That’s the haunting, can’t-look-away premise behind Nikki Erlick’s The Measure—a speculative debut that balances gut-punch emotions with razor-sharp social commentary. And let me just say: I devoured this one.

Erlick doesn’t rely on shock value. She leans hard into the quiet, shattering implications of the concept. How would people react? How would governments? Families? Lovers? Do short-stringers deserve the same jobs, the same dreams, the same relationships? Is it still living if you know how close the end is?

The novel unfolds through multiple perspectives—some you’ll fall for, some you’ll scream at, and some who slip through your fingers just as you start to care. Soldiers. Activists. Politicians. Siblings. Strangers who become soulmates. Each voice adds a new facet to a world increasingly divided by string length. Long-stringers plan futures. Short-stringers get boxed into expiration dates. It’s dystopia with a familiar face—eerily reminiscent of every moment in history when humans decided who was worth more based on something arbitrary.

Erlick’s prose doesn’t scream for attention—it aches in quiet, deliberate ways. She crafts moments that feel both global and intimate, zooming from sweeping policy changes to the quiet devastation of a couple choosing whether to stay together, knowing how little time one of them has left. You’ll find yourself flipping pages and pausing mid-paragraph to cry. Or scream. Or just breathe for a second.

Is it flawless? Not quite. The pacing dips in the middle, and a few characters drift off the page without the farewell they deserve. But those minor stumbles don’t break the spell—if anything, they’re forgivable bites in a book that otherwise serves a full-course emotional meal.

This isn’t just a book. It’s a mirror, daring you to ask yourself: Would you look? Would you want to know? And even more unsettling: What would you do if you did?

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🥄 Devour or Nibble?

Devour. Preferably all in one sitting, with your phone off and your heart open. This is the kind of story that lingers long after you’ve finished the last page… like a question you can’t stop asking.