Long Way Down - Jason Reynolds

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
Genre: YA Poetry-Novel

Blurb (on back of book): 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.

MY OPINION: *****

Let me tell you the
Setting
Crowded bookstore
Needed a quick read
Everything was
Expensive
So I read a book
There
Found this one
Written in prose
Much better than this
Piece I'm writing
Read it in one
sitting
Half an hour
Easily fell in
deep love
Powerful piece in quick writing

SO this book was written in poetry. When I opened it and saw the formatting, I thought "Oh great, a poetry book" and I almost put it down. But then I was like "it looks short, okay, I'll read it" because I was NOT going to read an entire NOVEL in a bookstore in less than an hour.

By Page ONE I was hooked.

Jason Reynolds's writing is gorgeous. The writing style is so POWERFUL in such a few words. In a couple of lines of poetry, you can imbibe a whole beautiful message. This book was amazing and beautiful and I loved it.

I don't know exactly what to say about this book. The whole plotline was really confusing and I will probably be rereading this book. I read it WAY too quickly and there were things I just did not process. The ending was very sudden and I am left feeling perplexed. Someone, please explain what happened.

So basically, the elevator was full of all of the people who lost their lives because of the revenge rule so they were all there to show Will that he would end up like them if he killed someone? That's what I got but if it was something different, PLEASE tell me!

I would definitely recommend this book to ANYONE. You don't HAVE to like poetry. I didn't think I would enjoy it but I ended up loving it.

Main Character: Will
Sidekick(s): Shawn, etc
Villain(s): Death, revenge, etc
Poetry-Novel Elements: This book was written in poetry but was a story, not a poem book