This book is thought provoking,  reflective and emotional — also anxiety inducing at times. While I’m not sure I should have read it during such a turbulent week, I absolutely loved it and will likely read it again. The characters were amazing and the romantic, You’ve Got Mail-esque subplot was so cute. 

Also — really not sure how these people have the self control to not open the box. I’d need to know. 

This book answers the age old question: "Does size matter?" Through the eyes of different characters in the book, we see them struggle with the sudden arrival of boxes to everyone 21+ containing a string. I found this book to be interesting, surprisingly in-depth, and at the end of it all quite uplifting. Don't read if you don't wanna cry though, these characters are lovable

Be prepared to cry... alot. I bawled my eyes out multiple times while reading. I was gripped in the beginning. This is NOT a sci-fi book!! It isn't about the boxes but about how people react to them. Not only do you read about 8 people whose lives are intertwined, but how the world as a whole deals with the strings. What would you do if you had a short string or a long string? How do people view you if they know the length of your string? Will people discriminate based on string length?

The book is very character-driven well. Erlick did an incredible job at making me emotionally connect to all these characters even though I knew the lengths of their strings, so I knew who had happy endings and sad endings. I also really loved how everyone was connected somehow. A person from Hank's story pops up in other people's stories, and vice versa.

There's a lot of deep conversation in the book about how to live your life, as while as discussions of hope, mortality, faith, discrimination, love, marriage, etc. I think the book showed that all life has meaning, that no matter what you do during your life or how you die or what happens afterwards, you still touch all the people around you, and your live affects their choices which moves others, etc. Hank's storyline really shows this and was my favorite.