This is a hard hitting look at gangs and gun violence in our youth of today.

Will's brother has just been shot and killed on the street.
Will decides that he must retaliate against who he thinks was the shooter.
He grabs a gun from his brother's dresser and gets on the elevator.
On the way down to the lobby he encounters friends and family members affected by gun violence.
Will this change his decision?

What a powerful book! Written in verse format using spacing on the page just as powerfully as the words themselves. There is so much emotion in so few words: heartache, anguish, despair, duty, fear, sadness etc. This book would be an excellent addition to any high school English curriculum.

Will's brother Shawn is murdered and 15 year old Will must seek revenge as per the 'rules'. The book follows Will as he descends in an elevator, stopping at each floor to admit another passenger, each one asking questions and helping Will think about the revenge that he is seeking. With each stop you can feel the pain that Will is feeling and see the hopeless loop his life is in and wonder what decision he will make.
I loved so many parts of this book and was so amazed how such emotion could be expressed with such few words, or the placement of a word! Here are a few highlights:

'but if the blood inside you is on the inside of someone else
you never want to see it on the outside of them.'

'Shawn was zipped into a bag and rolled away, his blood added to the pavement galaxy of bubblegum stars.'

'laughter, when its loud and heavy and aimed at you, I think can feel just as bad as being shot.'

'pretended like yellow tape was some kind of neighbourhood flag that don't nobody wave but is always flapping in the wind.'

'Weird talking to my father like he was a stranger even though we hugged life family.'

'Her face, eight years older than eight years old but still the same.'

Superb! Another powerful book from the incredible Jason Reynolds! With extraordinary use of such few words, he manages to build suspense and doubt in this heart stopping narrative!

Goodreads Synopsis:
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 Review:
I received a copy of this from Netgalley in exchange for a review.

This book tells the story of a boy who loses his brother. Determined to get revenge, fifteen year old Will sets out to use his brothers gun on the person who killed him, only following the rules. On the way to do the deed he's stopped in the elevator by his dead family. Is he hallucinating? Doesn't matter, they have important things to say. Most of them died following the same rules that Will is, the most important one being if someone shoots your family, you shoot them. Just hopefully they don't also follow the rules.

The story mostly takes place in the elevator, going floor by floor with the characters chatting and smoking the whole time. It's dramatic but in the quiet cold and calculated way, written entirely in poetry.

I enjoyed reading this book, though it's super short, the characters are pretty realistic despite most of them being dead, and the situation is completely unique to anything I've read lately. Maybe not my new favourite, but I still liked it. Definitely check it out if you get the chance.

Here's a link to buy the book on amazon, and another link to the authors twitter in case you have any questions.

https://www.amazon.ca/Long-Way-Down-Jason-Reynolds-ebook/dp/B06ZZLYTK9/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1504115353&sr=8-2&keywords=long+way+down

https://twitter.com/JasonReynolds83

Thanks for reading! Check out this review and more at my blog.
(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)