ebook quick read interesting to see how everything is connected and how that leads to the final decision

Book #12 Read in 2018 Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds This is a powerful verse novel for young adults. Will's older brother is killed in a shooting and Will thinks he has to follow the code and kill his brother's killer. He finds his older brother's gun and heads out. This book takes place on his elevator ride down from his apartment to the street to go find the killer. Each stop at each floor brings a ghost to Will....and things to think about regarding what he has planned. A powerful novel that high school readers will love.

The last line gave me goosebumps.

It was an interesting read, I had not actually realized that it was written in verse, so it's not to difficult to get into. It just missed the mark for me, for a lot of people it felt very powerful but to me it felt kind of obvious where it was going and didn't really feel original nor packed a punch. I just felt indifferent even though it was well-written. I liked how the ending leaves the reader pondering though. The audiobook narrated by the author was a good way to listen to the story.

On the back book jacket flap, Long Way Down author Jason Reynolds says he writes books for young people who are tired of feeling invisible. I'd say he's doing a great job. My students who don't want to read anything want to read his books. Now that I've read one, I can definitely see why. This book is written in verse, which you would think would scare off some teens, but it makes it immediately accessible. It gets straight to the heart of the matter. It's high quality poetry, too, using form, sound, repetition, and symbolism deftly to create a variety of moods and express each person's unique tone. I don't really want to spoil anything, so just read it. It's good.

Wow. I had heard of this one through a random teacher’s TikTok and how her students were STUNNED by the ending, and so I was sold.

This book was a quick read as it’s written in verse but it is a POWERFUL quick read. The ending also had me wide-eyed, mouth agape, and wondering where the rest was. Reynolds explores some deep themes with carefully chosen words and verses and everything down to the format of the page plays a part.

This book is definitely well written and touched on very sensitive, valuable topics, and I appreciate that. However, I just didn't necessarily enjoy it. Maybe it was because I was forced to read it for school, but I just couldn't get attached to any of the characters, and it was mildly boring. I love the recognition of gun violence (and I as a white person cannot and will not critique this too harshly), but it felt forced for shock value instead of drawing out the readers emotions. There just wasn't much emotion or rawness at all throughout the whole book. I love the idea this book had but I just didn't really enjoy it much. :))

4,5 stars - written in verse so it's a fast read. The verses were written in such a good way, I had to stop several times and have a "wtf" moment (in a good way) bcs Jason Reynold's pen is so good, whewwww

Beginning and ending were my favourite plus pretty cool concept. Also the interview at the end was very impactful stuff.

Une perle, époustouflant 💞

"If the inside of you is on the inside of someone else, you never want to see it on the outside of them." WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKK!!!! This is 110% the best book I've read this year I'm so ?!?!?! This was my first Jason Reynolds book and now I want to pick up literally everything he has ever written ever. The fact that this was written in verse made it so much easier to fly through which I LOVED because I could not get enough of it. I wish I was capable of putting into words how this book made me feel but I recommend to literally everyone.

3.75 stars |

I listened to the audiobook on Scribd. In an interview with the author at the end of the book, he describes this as "Boys in the Hood" meets "A Christmas Carol," and that's pretty much what it is. Will's brother Sean is killed in a neighborhood shooting. In the elevator on the way to get revenge by shooting the boy he believes killed Sean, he meets a series of friends and relatives. They're people who have died by violence in the past, like Sean's brother. They talk to him. And Sean has to make a decision. It's really heartbreaking to read about lives like this. Sean has had The Rules drilled into him: Don't cry; Don't snitch; Get revenge by killing the killer. I can see how these kinds of edicts can get embedded in a culture and can cause generations worth of harm. :( Our racist judicial system in America doesn't help either. It's a sad story, because it hints at wasted lives and collateral damage. The author says the whole book was a series of poems, which i caught a little of. But since it's an audiobook, I didn't have the words laid out on the page to cue me that it's poetry. But even my tin ear for this kind of stuff could hear the poetry every now and then.

I liked it, even though I don't think I got much out of it. Or at least, I don't think I actually got out of this book what I was supposed to get out of this book, if that makes any sense. I loved the way in which it was written and I loved meeting everyone, each character so uniquely different, but there wasn't anything super special that made me love it love it.

Powerful, quick read. Finished in about an hour and a half.

Read for school- it was solid

muy bueno, nunca pensé que me gustaría un libro escrito en versos.

wow wow wow this book gave me black mirror vibes

** spoiler alert ** 3.3 stars I finished this in one sit, and it was worth it! It gave me an airplane book vibe, one that doesn’t give you too much text wise, but the rest of the flight is given to thinking about the book. Nothing special when it come to a verse book, but I enjoy reading more of these kind of books then I should.

Powerful.

A teen out to avenge his brother’s murder examines “the rules” that have been passed down from father to brother over 3 generations (You don’t cry. You get revenge.) during the course of a single elevator ride with a gun in the waistband of his jeans. Sparse and powerful. Apparently it is written in verse, but the short audiobook is a narration (by the author) without any “sing-song” rhymes (thankfully, given the subject matter). It’s in many ways the opposite of the popular The Hate U Give: spare and self-contained (mostly in an elevator) whereas THUG is chatty with a big social + media component. Both are worthwhile and important perspectives.

"Might as well relax, Buck said. It's a long way down." Long Way Down is a fairly short book which you can finish in a short time but it packs a punch. This is also my first time reading a book written in verse. I unexpectedly really enjoyed the way the story is told through short sentences that felt a little bit like a poem. Despite being written in short sentences and simple words, the story is very compelling—especially because it talks about an important issue, which is gun violence. Even though it's not necessarily relevant in my country, I think it is highly relevant in some other countries where a lot of shootings happened and it has taken the lives of many innocent people."AT THIS POINT you probably already don't believe me or think I'm nuts. And maybe I am. But I swear this is all true. Swear."The book is written from the first point of view of Will, the main character whose brother got shot and died. The pacing of this book really kept me on the edge of my seat. I am always intrigued very time the elevator stopped at the next floor and someone came to join Will on his journey to the lobby from the seventh floor. At first I was really confused because I didn't know the connection between all these people. But towards the end, I finally was able to make sense of it all. Every single person that entered the elevator had some kind of connection with Will. I do not want to spoil too much by mentioning them all in this review, but it really got me emotional. I will tell you that the story ends with a huge cliffhanger.I was shocked that it ended there. 😱 I am left with so many questions and wanting for more. But I guess the author gives us the freedom to choose what's going to happen next and leave it to our own imagination. I seriously have a love-and-hate relationship with cliffhangers 😂. This book was able to keep me intrigued from start to finish. It was easy to read and didn't take long to finish. I did pick this book up because it's fairly short, and I did not expect it to be this good. The way this book raises concern about gun violence is a little bit similar to The Hate U Give (another book that I really love and recommend; it really affected me emotionally as well). I think I will try reading other books by Jason Reynolds in the future because I thoroughly enjoyed his writing in this one 😊. Read the full review here: http://www.thebookielooker.com/2018/1...

Reevaluating this one after listening to the audiobook. Jason Reynolds reads the audio and his cadence and delivery is exceptional. I loved this book so much more as an audio. Moving from a 3.5 to a 4

Will's desperate grief over the murder of his brother Shawn sets the stage for this gothic meditation in verse on love, family, community, belonging, and justice. Poems describe, examine and explode the rules that tell young black men not to cry, not to snitch and to take revenge as soon as possible. Fueled by the simplicity of the rules, Will sets off to avenge his brother's murder, but when he reaches the elevator to take him down, he finds himself unwillingly confronting truths and realities that are as brutal as the streets outside his apartment buildings' door, the streets he has to use to go to school, play ball, buy medicine for his momma. Black and white scratch illustrations and backgrounds enclose the poetry in gray walls. Is it a cell? Is it an elevator? Is it the netherworld? A brilliant examination of how resolution can turn to confusion, where right and wrong seem clear, choices are made, and then everything become mixed up in an unforgettable evocation of limbo, neither here nor there, a waiting room for life or death. Reading this book is like holding your breath, Will's breath, until something is decided, something irrevocable, and the choice is both his and ours.