Long Way Down

"An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger." --Booklist (starred review)
"Astonishing." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A tour de force." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A Newbery Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
A Printz Honor Book

A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature
Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award

An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction
Parents' Choice Gold Award Winner
An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017
A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017
A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017

An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds's electrifying 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.

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336 pages

Average rating: 8.31

59 RATINGS

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5 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

Mom_meluv
Oct 27, 2023
8/10 stars
This book deals with gang retaliation my daughter read it in high school, so I wanted to read it as well. I thought the book was very well written, but I did not like the ending.
E Clou
May 10, 2023
8/10 stars
This is incredibly sad, dark, witty, funny, and awesome. It reminds me a little of [b:A Christmas Carol|5326|A Christmas Carol|Charles Dickens|https:images.gr-assets.com/books/1406512317s/5326.jpg|3097440], but it's completely its own. I also love the conceit of the poetic form to the dribble of the ball on the court or in the small space of an elevator.
Anonymous
Apr 26, 2023
8/10 stars
description

WHAT. A. BUILDUP.

Writing this in verse was the right move. There was this perfect amount of tension as Will went down the elevator floor by floor by floor after making the decision to kill the guy he just knows killed his brother, Shawn. This was eye opening, fast paced, and emotional.

Highly recommend - it won't take long to read and it sounds like the audio version is stellar, too.

4 Stars
Anonymous
Apr 24, 2023
8/10 stars
Long Way Down was a powerful story told in quick, easy-to-read verse. I read it because my daughter's class is reading it in school and she wanted to talk about it. It manages to cut to the heart of so many characters in few words. I quite enjoyed it.
Lilalu
Nov 17, 2022
10/10 stars
A super short read but definitely a hard topic, make sure to research it before you read.

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