This book should never have been printed. I can forgive the re-printing of passages from TKAM; the novel is set in the future, why not insert flashbacks? It would have been nice if the flashbacks were altered to reflect Jean Louise's (Scout's) adult point of view, but seeing as this novel was penned before TKAM, the redundancy if forgivable. That said, the copy is littered with blatant printing errors. Whole sentences are repeated right next to each other; it's as if the book hadn't been copy edited.

What exists of the plot is extremely predictable, but most of the novel was a series of character sketches. Watchman is also unnecessarily broken up into parts. As for the racism- I forgive it because the characters are speaking like people of their time (remember, this novel is set in--was written in-- the past). Critics are decrying Atticus's racism, but they seem to ignore the fact that Jean Louise isn't so innocent herself. While she feels blacks and African-Americans deserve human rights, she does not refrain from referring to them as simple-minded and immature. She even goes so far as to call them "adult children." This could have been an excellent coming-of-age novel had it been executed more carefully, but as it is, the novel is disappointing.