"Brave and Bold" hit a new high in Alger's work, according Edwin Hoyt, but Hoyt describes the story as a "fiasco". Gary Scharnhorst describes it as "horrifying", and lists a shooting, a stabbing, and a suicide among the book's elements. The book was reviewed by a reader of the children's magazine "St. Nicholas"; he described it as "of the sensational order" and was glad he did not meet its characters in real life. This was the last review of an Alger work published by the prestigious magazine. The book initiated the controversy over making Alger's works available to the young.