My mother loved to tell me to "make a statement"—with my life, art, writing, clothes. To be honest, I think she mostly meant clothes, but when I read Kevin Wilson's new book, I was thinking about her. Wilson offers us the angsty teenage artists greatest dream, and worst nightmare. When they make their statement, panic ensues. As you may already know, I love Kevin Wilson's work, so I was predisposed to request this on NetGalley, and to love it. And of course, I did.

Now is Not the Time to Panic is, according to its author, Kevin Wilson, “a book about friendship, about memory, and about what it means to hold on to the person who we were, even as we become someone else. It’s about the ways in which art is the door that lets us walk into a new life, one that never seemed possible.”

Frankie is kind of a quirky kid, friendless and grieving her parents’ divorce and her father’s abandonment of his kids. She has nothing but time this summer, and so when Zeke, an even quirkier new kid, moves into the tiny town of Coalfield, Tennessee, the two are drawn together.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Ecco Publishing for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Frankie invites Zeke over one day; her dad has flown the coop, and her mom is at work, so in order to make it clear that she hasn’t invited him over for carnal purposes, Frankie talks to him about her love of writing. Zeke says that he likes to draw, and so together, they make a poster. The words are Frankie’s, and they are indeed well written for a kid of sixteen years: “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.” Zeke fills in the rest of the page with his artwork, and for good measure, they prick their fingers and comingle their blood on the poster. Then they dig out an old photocopy machine in Frankie’s garage, and make copies with which to furtively festoon the whole town. (After all, Coalfield isn’t a big place.) They don’t tell anyone it’s theirs, and enjoy the reactions to their guerilla art as sly observers.

The two teens share a lot in common. Both are outsiders; both are creatives; and both are living through the implosions of their families, with fathers that cheat and then leave, and mothers that are beside themselves with anger and shame.

Once the posters become noticed around town, rumors begin, and then copycats come along and make improvements, sometimes. There’s a hysterical piece in the local paper suggesting that their work is Satanic. Frankie and Zeke don’t say one word to anyone. They watch and they listen; they talk about it only with each other.

The crafting of these two characters, and their relationship, is well done, and I ache for both of these kids. The only time I see character slip is with regard to Frankie’s attitude toward sex. Her dispassionate take on it—she isn’t sure she really wants to, but maybe she should just do it and get it over with? Is not a mindset I’ve ever seen in a teenage girl, and believe me, I’ve known plenty of quirky ones. No, that’s a male attitude, and I suspect that Wilson would do better to use male protagonists, or else run his female ones by several very honest females in his chosen field, prior to publication.

As the summer goes on, I keep expecting the two to launch another joint project, but they don’t. She does some writing, and he draws, but there is no sequel, no follow-up. The poster is the poster. Shantytown, gold seekers, fugitives, hunger. Boom. That’s it. But years into the future, Frankie is still putting these damn things up. The heck…? I believe this of her; she is one strange person. Zeke’s mental health deteriorates that summer, and where that goes is completely credible. Those that work in the field will recognize Zeke, who is by far the better drawn of the two main characters.

This fascinating novel can be enjoyed by young adult audiences, because both of the protagonists are teenagers; however, this is also fiction that can be enjoyed by anybody. If you don’t read YA—and the truth is, I don’t, not anymore—you can still appreciate this one, and I recommend it to you.

This was disappointing. I loved loved loved his previous book and this just felt like a throwaway. There was soooo much poster talk and I just didn’t care. It was all meh.

After reading Nothing To See Here, I was really excited to read Kevin Wilson's newest release. This is a coming-of-age novel about two teenagers who create an art project that shakes up the town. The book reads almost like a YA novel with Frankie and Zeke's relationship being a central focus of the book - does he like me, does he not type of thing. Kevin's writing is able to transport you, perhaps because we all know the average American house on hot summer day as a teen.

While I found the author's note really interesting, I wish it was perhaps included at the end of the novel. I felt it already let me in to the story before I was ready.

I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it, however I did not feel as captivated by this story as I did Kevin's previous novel.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ecco for an advance copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

It’s summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, and art is seizing the city with an ironclad grip. Mysterious posters have surfaced across town, emblazoned with a haunting illustration and mystifying script: “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers,” it reads. “We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.” The residents marvel and the paranoiacs speculate, but no one knows that the posters’ origin is just a pair of teenagers with a Xerox machine and a dream.

So it goes in Kevin Wilson’s fourth novel “Now is Not the Time to Panic,” published Nov. 8. Told in alternating timelines, the book tells the story of how teenage outcast and aspiring novelist Frankie Budge meets budding artist Zeke Brown one fateful summer in 1996. When the two create the cryptic poster that sends Coalfield spiraling, it snowballs into a flurry of whispers and whiplash that alters their lives forever. Twenty years later, a reporter searches for the truth about the Coalfield Panic of 1996 in an investigation that threatens to overturn Frankie’s life once more.

Though Wilson’s prose is emphatic and resonant with narrative voice, Frankie’s ceaseless inner monologue demonstrates why the age-old writing maxim of “show, don’t tell” continues to persist as craft advice. While her pedantic explanations can be partially justified by the novel’s split temporality and retrospective reflections, they rapidly grow monotonous in places where more dynamic plot points might flourish. Wilson’s candid writing style is keen, but it isn’t enough to outstrip its unnecessarily explicative tendencies.

The novel’s dialogue attempts to display a veracious representation of teenage speech — peppered with “like,” ellipses, and overly juvenile uncertainties. While it demonstrates an admirable attempt at realism, Wilson is unable to decide between the stilted oral verisimilitudes of a transcript and traditional fictitious stylization. Instead, he settles for a murky in-between that more often distracts than rings true. Wilson, at times, writes in ways that portray Frankie and Zeke as younger than they actually are.

Wilson’s combination of precarious dialogue and static prose only serves to further flatten the novel’s one-dimensional characters. In theory, Frankie and Zeke have enough distinctiveness to be compelling: flush with unique interests, wrought family dynamics and ambition, the two teenagers have all the quirks of a John Green protagonist. Yet, their trajectories through the book’s plot render them as flimsy caricatures, more half-finished concept sketches than flesh and bone. Youthful self-importance and artistic exigence might be plausible motivations to fuel a narrative the length of a short story, but the book can’t seem to muster enough steam to cover the bases of a novel that encompasses decades.

The phrase that adorns their poster, too, feels washed-out by the time its closing chapter reams past. Too flowery to be catchphrased and too contextually weightless to be grounded by the novel’s specificity, it capitalizes on ornamentation in the vein of a viral Tumblr quote. Though Frankie mumbles it in her sleep even decades after its initial conception, there’s little to support its sense of primacy; in fact, its blissful ambivalence is perhaps the book’s most disillusioning component.

Despite its inspired premise, “Now is Not the Time to Panic” is unable to convince its audience of the magnetism it so fervently strives to evince, leaving the reader at somewhat of a loss as to why the bygone summer of 1996 lingers so heavily in Frankie’s consciousness. However, the novel’s attempt to broach themes of art’s power and once-in-a-lifetime human connection is commendably audacious, even if its most engaging elements — family, growing pains and adulthood — are relegated to the back burner.

Charmingly ambitious yet prosaically pedestrian, “Now is Not the Time to Panic” carries just enough poignance to casually rivet, but falls short of the charisma, depth and execution necessary to be truly incandescent. Though rife with the bursting imagination of a seasoned writer, the novel’s pitfalls dangle dangerously close to the edge of panic, grasping for a foothold above a precipice of disenchantment.

Since I'm a fan of pretty much anything Kevin Wilson writes, I had to read Now Is Not the Time to Panic. The foreword of the book explains some of the meaning behind the story. It was really moving - much more than I expected. There are so many layers to the characters that I really enjoyed exploring each of them in the two families represented throughout the story. Well done!

I am sad that I am finished reading this book, because now I am not reading it anymore. I so very much enjoyed it. I love the quirkiness and all the odd details and the feelings and images in the writing as well as the story, which I can't tell or explain because then I'd ruin the experience of the readers. I shared lines from the book with my son, who needs to read it, and with an online group, and I immediately got responses from many people in that group who were touched with the quote that I shared in the same way that I had been touched. So freaking much awesomeness! This story is set in 1996 before the internet could spread ideas and things like wildfire, but some things still did. Frankie and Zeke, two 16 years olds accidentally set off something so much bigger than they could have imagined. And this is the story of how that happened.

Kevin Wilson is.a favorite, so I was excited to read Now is Not the Time to Panic. It took me awhile to get into it. The angst of the lonely days of summer were difficult to connect with. However, once Frankie and Zeke began their experiment I was hooked. I was transported back to a time when people used land lines to call each other and news was shared via the daily paper or the evening news. When the protagonists innocently shared their art, the message took on a life of its own. Wilson creates characters that seem like someone we all know. He bounces from thirty years ago and current day with ease and brings the reader into the lives of Frankie and Zeke. If you like a bit of nostalgia combined with teenage days of self identification, this one is a must.

I read about 25% and wasn't clicking with the characters - I loved his last book but this one wasn't coming together quickly enough for me. DNF.

Thank you Ecco for a galley of this in exchange for an honest review!

Now is Not the Time to Panic is another slice of life novel from Kevin Wilson and this time we follow Frankie over the course of one unforgettable summer as she sets up a series of events with at times fatal consequences.

Wilson really does that slice of life story telling so well and this is no exception. I have a lot of admiration for authors who can effectively tell a story that takes place over a shorter period of time yet still make the world feel larger than that. I think all of this hinges on how well his characters are written and once again he does that pretty well…at least with his main characters.

The humor in this is also very quick and smart and a lot of it relies on those characters and their flaws. This will work for some and not for others. For me it really works and I did find myself smiling from time to time at some of the things happening.

The book does have its issues - Frankie and Zeke’s (Frankie’s new friend) escapades sometimes feel a bit tedious as the book goes on and the dialogue feels stilted for some characters in a way that surprised me…almost as if Wilson wasn’t quite sure who they were.

Still for the time spent on this and the fact that I really had a good time with it I would recommend this.

The ending to this book tied this story up nicely but I'm conflicted how I feel about the plot as a whole. A lot of time was spent focused on the past and not a lot on the present. This book is slow paced and there is a lot to learn before the story starts coming together.

I am not sure how I feel about this story. There were parts of it that I REALLY enjoyed, and I liked the writing style in general. However, there were parts where I felt like I was out of the loop, like I was missing something. Why was she so obsessed with the posters, and why did the town go crazy? Was this entire book supposed to be a metaphor for something else? If it was I definitely missed it. I took the story at face value and enjoyed most of it, particularly the retrospective pieces about what was happening around the globe in a pre-internet/viral era.

Being a teen in the 80's and 90's, I understand this book. I understand the characters. I relate to their boredom and angst, living each day to figure themselves out and struggling with it all. Trying to be heard, to be seen but then not wanting to be noticed at all. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I believe "the edge" saying can change and evolve into different meanings for everyone depending on the day. Thank you.

Thank you to Kevin Wilson, Ecco Publishing, and Netgalley for a digital ARC of NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO PANIC, in exchange for which I've offered my honest opinion.

In this much anticipated 2022 thriller from Kevin Wilson, two teenage artists make a piece of art that sends shockwaves through their community. The consequences of their actions loom large and profound, and hover much later than either of them expect. Their art changes them, their lives, and the world around them.

This is a book about the power of creation, of telegraphing, of messaging. It discusses the methods and ethics of exposing consumers to ideas in the same space as it explores the potential of the ideas themselves, making for an interesting tone and texture. I definitely think this book is mismarketed as a thriller. I don't like the author's handling of the topic of suicide, but then, I rarely do. Because so much of this story happens on a subtextual level, the plot suffers a touch of anemia. A cup of strong coffee will see a reader through the worst of the boring parts, though, and the thematic payoff is worth it.

Rating 🎨🎨🎨.5 / 5 messy paint palettes
Finished December 2022
Recommended? Sure, it was interesting.
Read this if you like:
🖍️ Art
👫 Teenage friendships
💭 Mental health rep
❤️‍🔥Young love

I've read all of Kevin Wilson's books and Now Is Not the Time to Panic was another amazingly moving and wonderful read

Loved this book! Kevin Wilson writes so much in what always feels like not enough pages. This book was so weird and wonderful and I have recommended it countless times since reading.

Now Is Not The Time To Panic seals the deal... Kevin Wilson is an auto-buy author for me from now on. I loved what his latest novel had to say about teenage alienation and connection, as well as the power of collaborative creativity to provide comfort and healing. The story is beautifully written... I highlighted many touching passages that really spoke to me. The book had just the right amount of mystery and uncertainty to keep me reading, and it's absolutely overflowing with heart. The author's note about his inspiration for the story and the book's central quotation is top notch, probably the more memorable author's note I've ever read. It actually added to my enjoyment of the novel!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Ecco for the opportunity to read an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. I can't wait to read Wilson's future publications!

Oh. Oh my.

I grabbed this book because I was a fan of Nothing to See Here. And I was not disappointed.

I loved the commentary on the life art gains once it leaves your hands. How it’s no longer yours anymore.

I loved Frankie and Zeke. How well matched they were. How real they felt to me. I loved how chaotically hopeful they were. The aching feeling of wanting back one specific moment in your life was written really well.

The virality of photos and phrases is well known in today’s society where social media drives the spread of a wide range of photos and phrases, but the effects of viral art on their creators is not so well known. This is one of the things that Now Is Not the Time to Panic (Ecco, 2022) seeks to examine. The book follows two teenagers, Frankie Budge and Zeke, through their creation of an art movement around a poster with the phrase: The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. As others in the town begin to participate in the movement, the consequences of hanging up the posters spiral out of Frankie and Zeke’s control, sometimes resulting in those others paying the ultimate price for their involvement. Frankie and Zeke not only grapple with the consequences of spreading the posters, but also with what it means to be a person and what the effect of art is in society.
This effect of art is poignantly addressed throughout the book. As the posters gather attention, Frankie and Zeke discuss its spread:
“‘We made the poster. So we can still control it, I think.’
‘I don’t think that’s how art works,’ he said, unsure of himself, which was disconcerting because, even though Zeke had always been kind of nervous, he’d always seemed really self-assured about what he thought he knew about the world” (92).
Unlike how Frankie imagines it, the spread of the posters does go wildly out of their control, but before it even happens, Zeke realizes that it’s possible for a piece of art to no longer be in the creator’s hands. Once the piece has been shared with the world, there’s no stopping how people interpret or use it. Art does not exist in a vacuum to be controlled by those who made it.
The prose is thoughtful without being overly complex. At times, it meanders away from the main plot, causing some confusion of focus, but Wilson reigns it in quickly enough that the story doesn’t go off the rails. The purpose of this wandering is clear: readers are firmly in the head of Frankie, and she has tangents when she thinks about what’s going on. After Zeke and Frankie have hung up enough posters that others are copying them, they see
“this girl, Madeline, hanging posters without any real fear of being caught, just stapling them to trees in the park. Madeline had been a cheerleader in junior high but then, I don’t know exactly why because I wasn’t aware of the complex negotiations required to be popular, she’d quit and started hanging out with he theater kids. She wasn’t a goth, not really, because I don’t think anyone really knew exactly what that was. I mean, she listened to Nine Inch Nails. She wore a lot of black eyeliner. We didn’t know what to call that, but we just knew that Madeline was suddenly not the Madeline who had been the sturdy base of the pyramid during pep rallies. She was transformed” (107).
There is a certain amount of deviation from the detail that is most relevant to the plot (Madeline hanging up posters) in order to demonstrate Frankie’s thought process as this is going on. The digression doesn’t last for long though. In the next paragraph, the story snaps back to plot relevant information, keeping the story moving and readers engaged.
The plot in combination with the prose draws readers in, engrossing them with anticipation over what will happen next. I could not put the book down. At least for most of it. The end drops the ball—the moments that should have tension lack it, causing disinterest. Because of the way that the plot progresses in the final quarter, readers know what the ending entails in full. They grow up—we get it, but where’s the nuance? What’s so different about Frankie and Zeke’s relationship with each other that separates them from every other young adult protagonist that matures at the end of the novel? Readers have seen this type of end before. There’s nothing exceptional about it.
As a whole, Now Is Not the Time to Panic thoughtfully engages with ideas surrounding growing up, young love, and art’s importance in society. The story is captivating for both the plot elements as well as the stylistic choices, and even with the end being on the weaker side, the book is still a wonderful coming-of-age novel.

Thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. I’d previously read Nothing to See Here and The Family Fang by the same author, so I was anxious to read Wilson’s newest book. It did not disappoint. He writes beautifully flawed characters and I loved the story of Frankie and Zeke’’s life changing summer. I’ll continue reading more by this author in the future.