Justyce McAllister is part of the debate team and top of his class and an aspiring student of an Ivy League. But none of those things matter when a police officer put a handcuff when he is helping someone. Justyce is a brave young man. I like it that in the process, he discovered so many things about his surroundings.

Dear Martin is so much, so full. To be honest, it is giving me a hard time to write a review because I don’t know how to start or what to include. It made me speechless. It twisted and broken my heart so many times. It is in good pace and I like how it was written.

This book tackles stereotyping and discrimination of race. There are different perspectives and opinions included, and all has a point. It opened my eyes how African-Americans struggles for their rights, freedom and non-violence, however, there are people who are not are not welcome or ready to welcome them. Despite that there is law about discrimination, African-Americans are still suffering and struggling. They are still striving to get their fair treatment from the society and it does not only happens in the United States of America but all over the world. Further, Dear Martin widen my perspectives. I couldn’t help but agree with other arguments lay down because it has a point. However, there are reasonings that I couldn’t help but react and made me angry, especially those narrow-minded opinions. There are so many times that I questioned our society. We are in the new Millenia, why do we still have this kind of situation or problem? There are laws that protects people, does the law really protects us or they are just written there and not being implemented? The stereotyping, racism, prejudice and discrimination in this story does not only voice out African-Americans but all POC. Moreover, there are so many terrifying, shocking twists that twisted and broken my heart so many times. I have so many feels for Dear Martin, it made me happy and steady but most of time angry and terrified.

Nevertheless, I’m very thankful that I get to read and review Dear Martin. I highly recommend this book to everyone. Dear Martin is amazingly and gloriously written. It is very engaging and worthy of your time.

Stone presents the story of a preppy young Black student who finds himself suddenly victimized because of the color of his skin. Now he has a heightened awareness of the disparity in treatment based solely upon race. Justyce is found by the police, wearing a hoodie and trying to help his drunk ex-girlfriend get safely home. His gallantry results in his being handcuffed and threatened by authorities. The situation is straightened out but not before Justyce has felt the fear and the unfairness of being unjustly accused. In his attempt to deal with his growing awareness of the danger of racial bias, he turns to Martin Luther King and writes to the peaceful leader, posing rhetorical questions about how the Civil Rights icon would have handled the issues Blacks face today. There is another incident with the police that is shocking and impacts Justyce in a consequential way. His world view has become tainted by the stain of prejudice.

Stone’s timely novel highlights the realities of life as a young Black man. The journal entries to MLK demonstrate an attempt to follow a peaceful path and the difficulties of not reacting violently. Unfortunately this book portrays a reality that many in society must suffer. It’s a wakeup call to make civil rights abuses unacceptable and create a dialog on correcting abuse.

4.5*

This book taps into our social consciousness. It tackles head-on what our students are reading about in the headlines and confronting in their daily lives. It is going to make them ask necessary questions. For readers who love The Hate You Give and All American Boys.

For fans of The Hate U Give and Netflix's Dear White People.

Justyce is a 17-year old African-American teen who aims to try to figure out the world and how he should live in it through the lens of Martin Luther King, Jr. He quickly learns that it's a lot easier to do that in theory than in reality when he is surrounded by racial profiling, racially-based hatred, racial slurs, and discrimination up-and-down the spectrum of society: police officers to classmates. To complicate matters, Justyce's best friend Manny, who is also African-American, grew up on the right-side of the tracks and seems to have more in common with their white classmates than Justyce, who grew up on the other side of the tracks. And more confounding is that Justyce is falling for his debate partner Sarah-Jane, a Caucasian teen who is more "woke" than Manny.

Like Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give enlightens readers, Dear Martin illumines the fact that while school segregation and "For Coloreds" signs are things of the past, racial discrimination is still actively a part of American society, a part that needs to become obsolete, but that, unfortunately, won't happen until we have more Sarah-Janes and fewer Brads.

This book and this perspective are much needed in today's society. Narratives featuring a male POC dealing with every day racial profiling.

This isn't my type of book. I did purchase it for my library.

I sat on this review for a long while. I got this book for review from Netgalley, and felt terrible about not delivering my review until now, but college was kicking my ass - also I felt like I needed to sit on it and really think about it. And I have.Dear Martin by Nic Stone is a Black Lives Matter story. It follows Justyce, a boy who's the top of his class and has to deal with racist "friends" and police violence on his life. He writes letters to Martin Luther King Jr. as a way of coping and trying to understand, if not why, but how to deal with it. This feels too shallow to describe the story - but also, I don't want to spoil like the synopsis in Goodreads does, lmao.
On my tiny Goodreads review, I said that the writing felt a little too light for such a hard topic. I still kind of think that - the book was short and mainly made of dialogues, and I wish I could get the story and the other characters a little bit more fleshed out. Sometimes, the story felt too fast. But that's the only negative point.
But there is one character you really get to know. Justyce. His letters to Martin Luther King and his voice adds a note of truthfulness to the story. He's a nice boy, who's just trying to live his life and understand how to deal with all the racism that he and other POC suffer. I really like the letter format, and the way Justyce wrote, asking for help and respecting Martin's legacy but at the same time, talking to him as he would to a friend, was heartbreaking.
The microaggressions were devastating to see - especially because Justyce struggled with understanding that his friends were wrong to do it, and not that he was wrong to be bothered by it. This is a theme that constantly repeats through the story, and it's an interesting - and true, and heartbreaking - thing that happens in real life. The victim tries to find the reason why the oppressor is acting that way. Tries to justify it for other reasons other than the color of his skin. Maybe it is a coping mechanism. But Justyce reaches the same conclusion every minority does. People act like that because of their prejudice. It is never the victim's fault.
I also really liked the gang element. Inside a gang, no matter how awful it is what they do, they are a family. This is why so many black boys end up falling in the path of crime - there, they have the support and protection the racist society they live in never offered them. Even though Justyce is an incredibly kind boy, he himself considers entering the gang, because that feels safer than keep going to school.
It's a really important book, and a narrative that deserves and needs to be told.

I loved this book, but I hate that this is a reality for so many teens in our country today. I will definitely purchase and recommend.

Dear Martin is the story of Justyce, who gets top marks at school and dreams of going to Yale. One night, his ex-girlfriend Melo gets very drunk and he attempts to take her home and not letting her drive in that state, but before he knows it, two cops arrive and handcuff him, under allegation that he was trying to carjack her. Assaulted and mistreated, even Melo's testimony for him barely is enough to get him out of jail. After that, Jus can't ignore anymore the microagressions at school and the major problems in the system and the police when dealing with black people. So he starts writing letters to Martin Luther King, in the hope of becoming more like him. But it won't be easy, and much more awaits him.

This book is a punch to the gut compacted in a little over 200 pages. Stone's style is raw, unapologetic and a bit dry. It feels to me that the book could have done with more descriptions and more narration, as it's very dialogue-heavy and I wish it'd been longer. Despite that, the read was very intense and had me holding my breath and getting so angry I had to make a few breaks from reading. At the same time, I couldn't stop reading it - it's such an intense read and it makes you mentally scream with anger and frustration.

I loved Justyce and SJ, although the chemistry between them felt slightly unconvincing - probably because of the shortness of the book. It opened my eyes to the Black Lives Matter movement's causes and experiences I will never have but I need to be aware of. It feels to me that this book is siblings with The Hate U Give, both protagonists being black in a mostly white school trying to learn how to navigate without losing their identity.

Despite its shortness, this isn't a light book. It kept me thinking, and it's supposed to make you angry. I definitely felt the emotion Nic Stone put into the writing and it left me quite burning with anger, sadness and grief. But also hope. Dear Martin is a read that will move you and I highly recommend it!

People from all places and all ages (well, teenagers and older) should read this book, as well as The Hate U Give. As a white person, an insight into the perspective of people of colour is so important. Into their lives and experiences, some that are so similar, some that are so different.

Captivating, powerful, and thought-provoking from the first page to the last!

They're subjects that make us uncomfortable but doesn't that make things like institutional and cultural prejudice all the more important to discuss?
Pluses for this one: Stone knows that this is a complex issue that shouldn't be easily resolved in a novel. Indeed, the characters struggle to understand how these things happen or even what they think and feel about events.
Minuses: Its a bit meandering and haphazard. One of the major turning point scenes feels forced.
Still, a great choice to inspire some important conversations with young readers.

Amazing book. Thank you Nic Stone for writing it. It was enlightening and heartbreaking, but hopeful.

In Nic Stone's ambitious and timely debut novel, Dear Martin, the reader is placed in the shoes of an African American boy confronting racial inequality and establishing his own identity in our world. Dear Martin is a coming of age novel that feels more like a series of vignettes. Stone presents several hard hitting topics ranging from affirmative action, identifying masculine identity within the African American culture, and also tackling racial stereotypes of African Americans in different episodes of Justyce's life and provides no easy answers.

Justyce is an African American teen caught between two worlds. He is too 'white' for his black friends. His private school education, honor roll GPA, outstanding test scores set Justyce apart. To his white friends, Justyce is an outlier and despite his academic success from his own hard work, some of his classmates believe his race gets an unfair advantage over them. Through a series of journal entries, Justyce attempts to figure out his place in the world by exploring the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. Stone goes a great job in depicting what it means to be an African American male in today's time. She explores privilege and race relations while also tackling the 'thug' representation and the victims of social injustice. The story's climax comes when a violent altercation between a retired white police officer and his best friend that puts Justyce in the spotlight.

Dear Martin is a slim book that is well written and fast paced without sacrificing depth which makes it a great read for both reluctant and advanced readers. While the book offers a lot of different paths Justyce can take to become a man, there is a serious absence of the voice of African American women in this story. I wished Justyce's mother and his girlfriend were as three dimensional as the male characters. Overall Dear Martin is a powerful read that will make you think long after you finished it.

Dear Martin completely blew me away.

It's been about a month since I've read Dear Martin (yes, I'm behind on my reviews again, shhh) and there hasn't been a day where I haven't thought about it. About the events that took place in the book, about the characters, about the amazing way the book was written and how I wish this wasn't a debut book and that Nic Stone had already written 20 other books that I could marathon read right now.

The thing about the characters in this book are that they completely come to life. Well, not literally, of course, -that would be terrifying,- but usually whenever I read a book I will stop thinking about the characters once I close the book. Maybe I'll think of them when someone else mentions them, or when I see the book on my shelf. But with this book it was different. The characters really stayed with me. So much so that I sometimes think about what they're up to now. Like they're real people. 

This kind of makes sense because Nic Stone managed to make the characters seem so real. She made everything seem so incredibly real. From the dialogue to the setting, everything was so incredibly perfect. You know how sometimes you're reading a book and a character says something, and you just know that no one would ever say that in real life? Well, this book didn't have that. At all. And it was great.

The book is only a little over 200 pages, and the way the author managed to tell such a complete story in so little pages is incredible. The whole book is incredible, and it really packs a punch. The way it deals with such difficult topics like racism, police brutality, racial profiling is so powerful, and I just know that it'll stay with me for a very very long time.

Needless to say, I think this book should be required reading, and I will be reading every single thing Nic Stone writes in the future. From short stories to 700-page books; I'll read it. Because, in my opinion, Dear Martin is for sure one of the best books of 2017. 

Tw: violence, sudden death of character.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Considering where he comes from Justyce, has lived a pretty good life so far. He escapes the “bad” neighborhood where he grew up and is fortunate enough to attend Braselton Preparatory Academy as a full-scholarship student. Captain of the debate team and an all-around good student, Justyce is on track to achieve all of his goals.

When he finds himself unexpectedly in handcuffs for trying to help his too-drunk ex-girlfriend, Justyce’s worldview shifts. He begins to notice the digs that his white classmates make and becomes increasingly frustrated with their antics. Speaking out in his safe space, the debate classroom, doesn’t help either because not everyone, including his best friend and fellow black student Manny, agrees with him. Throughout the novel, Justyce attempts to channel his frustrations by writing letters to Martin Luther King, Jr. in an effort to live like him. As he becomes more angered with his peers and their ignorance, Justyce begins to lose himself, especially when tragedy hits close to home.

THOUGHTS: Timely, raw, and powerful, this book will make readers think! Stone succeeds in portraying a main character who truly loses his innocence after false accusations. Hand it to anyone looking for an amazing, fast, and heartbreaking read, especially reluctant readers. Language, racial tensions, and violence may make this a book suitable to more mature readers.

I feel that this book brings a very powerful, relevant message to all of those who read it. Many will relate to it and many will have their eyes opened.

Fairly short book considering all the author, Nic Stone, packed into it.
Great read, a lot of varied scenes and situations dealing with race, racism, and prejudice of all ages.
Hopeful ending, I don't want to give anything away!
Justyce was inspired to write letters to MLK jr after getting arrested under false pretenses.
Page 157
"you can't change how other people think and act, but you're in full control of you . When it comes down to it, the only question that matters is this: if nothing in the world ever changes, what type of man are you gonna be?"

Some books, some characters, come to life for readers. You find yourself shaking your head, wiping away tears and swallowing down anger and frustration. And, even when you close the book, it stays with you – like song lyrics you can’t get out of your head. You find yourself using the story, or the characters, as a measure for your own actions, reactions and perceptions. Nic Stone’s Dear Martin is one of those rare and amazing books.

Dear Martin is an important book for more reasons than I can possibly outline in this post – it is raw, it is compelling and it is painfully real. Justyce McAllister is a seventeen year old high school student at a prep school in Atlanta. He is at the top of his class, on the debate team and headed to Yale. However, despite doing everything he can to be successful and respectful, he finds himself in handcuffs after trying to help a friend. This interaction with police shakes his sense of self and forces him to open his eyes to what is happening to young, black men like him around the country. To help him process what he is seeing and feeling, he begins to write letters to Martin Luther King, Jr. and begins what he calls an experiment to “Be Like Martin”.

As Justyce begins to pay more attention to what is happening around him, he finds himself at a crossroads. He is struggling with the big questions: How can he make a difference? How can he prevent himself from being drowned by hopelessness? How can he speak up about injustice and call out others for their ignorance and prejudice without resorting to violence?

Nic Stone is a remarkable writer. She creates incredible characters that grab you and don’t let go. She also brilliantly weaves the lives of Justyce, and his friends and family, with current events and overall themes of social justice, history, racial profiling, community and more. Stone also doesn’t pretend everything is “fixed” as the book ends. While there is a satisfying conclusion to the novel itself, the book offers more questions than answers and the distance between the two remains with readers – as it should.

Read this book. Open your eyes. Force yourself to examine what is happening in our country and ask yourself why. Put yourself in Justyce’s shoes. Let yourself feel…and then do something.

I read this in three hours, in one sitting, and if I wasn't still alive right now I would probably say I didn't breathe the entire time I was reading.

This book is important and so necessary in 2017. The characters are all so vividly real. I could see having any of these kids in my classes and listening to these conversations about race. I've heard kids make comments like Jared has and seen kids react justifiably in the way Justyce does. Much of the book is hard to read, not because it's graphic, but because it's just such a real representation of the insanity that has happened, and is happening in our world right now.

I think this is a must-read for everyone.