Sypnopis: 

An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds’s fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother.

A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE

Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.

And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if WILL gets off that elevator.

Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

Book Review

 

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(November 2020)
I re-read this story for the first time in three years and I still love this book. I feel like I have developed a soft spot for this story. This time I listened to the audiobook and I loved this story a lot more the second time around. Great story, great poetry. Always a
5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ read!

(November 2017)
Jason Reynolds is an amazing writer! He was able to take something so real and sensitive and add his cool take and approach to magical realism. 

I went in to this book not knowing what it really was about. I just knew that Jason Reynolds wrote it and I knew I’ll end up liking it. So the story is about Will and Will’s big brother Shawn getting killed and the story unravels from there. 

As I was reading I couldn’t decipher what was real and what wasn’t. It was making me crazy in a way, but in a good way. Certain parts in the book were very eerie and had me thinking about it all through the night. I strongly believe if a book can have me think the way Long Way Down did is a winner in my eyes. 

Jason Reynolds uses verse and poetry to help make this powerful story come to life. His writing style is amazing and grabs my attention from the start. 

I won’t lie towards end of the story I think I shed a few tears because the story was so beautiful and real and most importantly honest. I think anyone who loves Jason Reynold’s work would love this book and people who love books written in verse.

Long Way Down had so many elements that made me think, this is definitely something I’ll be re-reading very soon. And lastly of I love how Jason added his own touch to magical realism within the story. This needs to be a motion picture movie soon that’s how much I loved and enjoyed it!