Type of read: Commuter (listened to and from work)

What made me pick it up: I read 'We Carry Their Bones' which is the true story behind 'The Nickel Boys.' I felt it was a logical progression in reading. Looking back at it, I may have read 'The Nickle Boys' first and then 'We Carry Their Bones' as I found myself continually comparing fiction to nonfiction.

Overall rating: I don't think I should have read 'The Nickel Boys' and 'We Carry Their Bones' so close together. I kept jumbling up the storylines, people, and places. It was also really hard for me to look at 'The Nickle Boys' as a work of fiction (even though it's based on the real story and events of the Dozier School) because I had so much of the background information on what had actually happened and what had been found. Aside from that, If found it really hard to follow along. I felt like 'The Nickel Boys' jumped settings a lot. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention or maybe I was continually getting the stories mixed around in my brain, but I didn't feel like it had a solid flow and - again it may have just been how I was taking in the reading - but I felt like the main characters kept changing without clear delineation of when and why. I will say, I was not expecting the ending and it did absolutely help make the formatting of the book make sense. I would recommend 'The Nickel Boys' but I would highly suggest that you either read it before reading 'We Carry Their Bones' or give yourselves a good amount of time in between to be able to have a bit of mental space. I literally read them within a week of each other and that made everything murky.