The Nickel Boys Review

     Elwood Curtis is a smart young black man. He should have everything in front of him- except that he is growing up in 1960s Tallahassee. He gets sentenced to a reformatory school, the Nickel Academy, unfairly. As the darkness and cruelty of the school reveals itself, Elwood only survives off of a few things- one of those being his friend, Turner. Both boys have different views on the goodness in the world, but their friendship grows strong. The tensions in their friendship caused by these differences ultimately leads up to a decision that will alter both boys' lives forever. 

    Keep in mind that everyone has their own opinion. This review is only my opinion, and you may have your own, different one. I would take into consideration what I say, but do not make a decision about the book solely based off of this review. Let's begin:

    I'll start off by saying the part of the book that was the best: the story. The plot is full of things that people can connect and relate to. Even if you have a hard time actually connecting, the story still depicts a time in history that is important to remember and learn about. I also think it highlights an aspect of that part of history that tends to be less talked about- cruel reform schools. Therefore, the plot was the strongest aspect of the book.

    Unfortunately, there were a few things that made it hard for me to fall in love with the story. First, I found the writing style to be slow and a bit boring. I felt like this story should have been a bit faster and more intensely written to get readers in the mood of the book. I did not feel this way in the beginning. It started out strong, but I believe it lost something along the way and fell into a more generic writing that bored me. Sadly, it remained this way throughout the novel, leaving me bored and causing a couple of other issues.

    Due to the boredom, I had a hard time caring about the book and the characters to the extent that I should have. Some of the harsher scenes I had a slight reaction to, not because I cared about the character it was happening to, but because it is a harsh reality that is difficult to read about and process. I believe most people would have had at least a small reaction such as a wince to these scenes. However, the characters themselves did not connect with me.

    This also lead me to being unaffected by all of the plot and character twists. There were a few parts, two in particular, where there were twists that I should have felt more. I should have been more surprised and upset, but I felt an odd lack of emotion instead.

    This is a very popular and highly regarded novel, but I think it is simply because people like the story and so are overlooking the blandness of it overall. I can understand appreciating the story and liking it- I did too. However, I cannot ignore the boredom I felt while reading. I am not entirely sure why I felt this to such extremes, but my best guess is simply the writing style, so perhaps you may not feel the same way because everyone prefers different writing styles.

    The last thing is that I found I was getting confused by both the timeline and the jumping in the story. There are sudden time changes without any warning or explanation that I personally did not like. There were also parts of the plot that seemed jumpy and awkward to me. When you put the disjointedness of the story with the feeling of boredom, it resulted in a novel that I almost just stopped reading. The ideas behind the story were the only things that really made me hand in there.

    Overall, this book was not really for me. I could not attach to the characters, did not feel much while reading, and was very bored the entire time I was reading. I did connect to the story, but even then I felt it was a bit disjointed. The history behind the plot is important to remember and I did learn while I read. Only those two things and the unique take of this time period by focusing on a reform school made me complete the book and give it that little push to more stars.

Rating: 2.5/5 stars (+1 for plot, +1 for unique take, +0.5 for important history)

Author: Colson Whitehead

Publisher: Doubleday

# of Pages: 213

Genre: Historical Fiction

Series: Standalone